French containment system designer GTT has emerged victorious from an appeal against arbitration in the UK’s High court.
In a judgement made in late December and finally made public, Justice Julian Flaux dismissed former French shipbuilder Chantiers de l’Atlantique’s appeal to set aside a February 2009 award made against it, which the yard claimed was obtained by fraud on the part of GTT.
The judge, however, found that there had been “a deliberate decision” taken within GTT in June 2005 not to disclose test results to the French yard.
In particular he highlighted a letter written in June 2005 by former and later sacked GTT president and general director Jacques Dhellmes as “deliberately misleading” and said he found much of the ex-boss’ evidence as evasive and less than wholly truthful
Justice Flaux said the only “dishonesty by GTT in the arbitration” was in the evidence given to the tribunal by GTT research department director Karim Chapot who gave the impression that tests had been carried out on CS1 panels supplied by Chantiers and because he concealed the existence of tests.
He said several aspects of Chapot’s evidence as “extraordinary” and described him as “argumentative and evasive”.
“I have reached the firm conclusion that, in M Chapot’s evidence to the tribunal, there was fraud in the arbitration itself on the part of GTT,” he said.
But the judge ruled: “Even if the true position had been disclosed to the tribunal, that would, in all probability, not have affected the result of the arbitration.”
The original arbitration between two warring French parties centres on three LNG newbuildings built at Chantiers which suffered debonding in their GTT-designed CS1-type containment systems. The problems required extensive repair work delaying the delivery of the trio.
Cases relating to the three vessels have also been brought in Paris’ Tribunal de Commerce. The two sides have also instigated criminal proceedings against each other. GTT is suing Chantiers for theft of documents and bribery of witnesses, while Chantiers is accusing GTT of fraud.
GTT is currently up for sale. Final bids for the company are expected toward the end of the first or early in the second quarter.