The Supreme Court. 1. The Supreme Court shall uphold the Constitution and ensure its full respect.
The Supreme Court a. The Supreme Court is the highest court in the land. It shall be located in the federal capital and consist of a maximum of nine (9) Justices headed by Chief Justice;
The Supreme Court. The two court decisions above set the background for the analysis of the Supreme Court. The first question to be considered, probably the most pivotal concerning the end result, was whether the District Court was wrong in concluding that section 3 of the Finnish Arbitration Act creates a peremptory obstacle to extending the arbitration clause to non- signatories. The Court of Appeal seemed to think so, but in its reasoning it failed to mention on what grounds exactly the requirement of written agreement was bypassed. In its decision KKO 2013:84, released on 13 November 2013, the Supreme Court first went through the factual background of the case, then moving to state the applicable provisions of law, sections 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Finnish Arbitration Act. The court also took notice on the aforementioned precedent KKO 2007:18 as well as KKO 1990:116, which related to ambiguity of the arbitration clause and the fact that the claim was not based on a breach of the underlying agreement. As for KKO 2007:18, the court underlined that the dispute and claim in question were based on the underlying agreement, which contained the arbitration clause, and its interpretation. In KKO 2013:84, the Supreme Court refers to a number of facts which support the view that the non-signatory beneficiary C would not be bound to arbitration. First of all, C was not a party of the underlying agreement containing the arbitration clause. Secondly, the court plainly stated that C had not made a written arbitration agreement as required by section 3 of the Finnish Arbitration Act. Additionally, the court mentioned that, accordingly with the decisions of the District Court and the Court of Appeal, section 4 of the Finnish Arbitration Act was not applicable in this case. Neither had C become a party to the arbitration agreement as the assignee or directly under the law. All of these factors, as the Supreme Court directly stated, would seem to point to the conclusion that C was not bound by the arbitration agreement. However, the court decided to rely on other factors instead. The fact that C’s claim directly derived from the shareholders’ agreement between A and B was given great significance. The Supreme Court stated that because C’s claim for damages was based on a breach of the underlying shareholders’ agreement, resolving the case “calls for application and interpretation of the underlying agreement and the right to purchase shares contained therein”. Due to this and the fact that the...
