A tribunal of three arbiters was appointed. The venue of the hearing of the arbitration was Singapore. The tribunal took the view that the procedural rules applicable to the arbitration were contained in the ICC Rules. There was no specific reference to any curial law in the award. The Final Award was signed by two members. The third member declined to sign it. The majority of the tribunal subsequently rendered an Addendum to Final Award and a Decision With Respect of Final Award.

Garuda filed a Notice of Originating Motion in the High Court of Singapore to set aside the Award, the Addendum and the Decision and for various other relief. Garuda applied for leave to serve the motion on Birgen Air out of Singapore and also for leave for substituted service within Singapore. The application for service out of jurisdiction relied on Order 69A, rule 4 of the Rules of Court, which provides that service out of an originating process (in relation to the International Arbitration Act 1994) "is permissible with leave of the Court whether or not the arbitration was held or the award was made within the jurisdiction."

Garuda’s application was heard ex parte [namely, not in the presence of the other side] and an Order was granted for service out of jurisdiction and substituted service on Birgen Air’s solicitors in Singapore. Birgen Air applied to set aside the Order and all other subsequent proceedings.

At first instance, the High Court granted Birgen’s application and set aside the Order for service out and all subsequent proceedings, on the grounds that there was material non-disclosure by PT Garuda and also that this was not a proper case for service out of jurisdiction.

PT Garuda’s appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed.

2. There is a distinction between "place of arbitration" and the place where the arbitral tribunal carries on hearing witnesses, experts or the parties, namely the "venue of hearing". Where parties have agreed on the place of arbitration, it does not change even though the tribunal may need to hear witnesses or do any other things in relation to the arbitration in a different location. After considering the correspondence, the Court of Appeal rejected the argument by PT Garuda that the parties had changed the place of arbitration from Jakarta to Singapore. Singapore became the venue of the hearing but the place of arbitration remained Jakarta.

3. As the place of arbitration was Indonesia, the arbitration proceedings were subject to Indonesian law.

4. Article 34(iv) of the Model Law, which is given the force of law in Singapore by Part I of the International Arbitration Act 1994, provides grounds for setting aside of an award. It was held that Article 34 applies only if an arbitration has its "place of arbitration" in Singapore. Singapore courts can only intervene in relation to an arbitration governed by the Model Law in the limited instances set out in Articles 8, 9, 35 and 36.

5. Section 24 of the Act gives additional grounds to the High Court to set aside an award. The Court of Appeal agreed with the High Court that section 24 and Article 34 of the Model Law are closely linked, so that if Article 34 is not applicable, then section 24 will also not be applicable.

6. As there was no basis for PT Garuda to file the Originating Motion in Singapore under Article 34 or Section 24, and as Indonesian law governed both the lease agreement and the arbitration proceedings and the award was rendered in Jakarta, Indonesia was clearly the most appropriate forum. Accordingly, this was not a proper case where leave to serve the notice of Originating Motion out of jurisdiction should be granted.

7. In view of the findings above, the Court of Appeal did not consider it necessary to go into the issue of whether there had been material non-disclosure on the part of PT Garuda in their application for leave to serve out of jurisdiction.

The Act does not clearly spell out which of its provisions apply only to arbitrations conducted in Singapore. For example, section 6 of the Act, which provides for a mandatory stay of Court proceedings where there is an arbitration agreement, and section 7, which allows security obtained in Admiralty proceedings to be retained as security for the satisfaction of an award, have been interpreted to apply to foreign arbitrations. These sections, too, fall within Part II of the Act. It remains to be seen how the other provisions in Part II which are not specifically dealt with here will be interpreted in future cases.