Swiss Arbitration Decisions

The decision is certainly an interesting one. It has already been commented by Antonio Rigozzi (Cahiers de l’Arbitrage  2009 / 2 p. 33) and by  Laurent Hirsch in the arbitration forum arbitrage-adr@yahoogroupes.fr in March 2009. The decision was also discussed by Hansjörg Stutzer in the Thouvenin newsletter at http://www.thouvenin.com/pages_e/frame/05aktuell.html

This decision the Federal Tribunal issued on May 7, 2010 involves two international Russian biathletes belonging to the Russian National Biathlon Team, who were tested for illicit substances at the end of 2008 and found positive.

The International Biathlon Union Doping Hearing Panel suspended the biathletes for two years from the date of the tests and an appeal was made to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”).

This decision of the Swiss Supreme Court is the third in the matter of the Spanish cyclist Alejandro Valverde Belmonte.

There was a first decision dated October 29, 2010 (4A_234/2010). The first Belmonte decision was quite interesting because it raised the issue of the degree of independence and impartiality expected from a party-appointed arbitrator.

The case involved two football teams and a football federation. One of the teams was denied a license to play in the first division of the championship for the following season as it was involved in bankruptcy proceedings. However the team ended up playing in a qualifying playoff game, which it won, therefore obtaining the right to play in the first division of the championship for the following year – despite the bankruptcy proceedings.

The case involved a players’ agent who signed a contract with a club in Chile, pursuant to which he would perform some services and be paid in instalments. When only the first two instalments were paid, he sued in the FIFA Players’ Status Committee but in February 2014, the single judge of the Players’ Status Committee rejected the claim because he found that the Claimant failed to establish that his activities fell within the FIFA Players’ Agents Regulations.