Investor Presentaiton
110
INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTE SETTLEMENT: A SEQUEL
arbitral tribunal. A party may seek such relief without jeopardizing
its ability to pursue its claim for damages before the arbitral tribunal
itself.
J. Consolidation of claims
115
Given the huge number of bilateral and regional IIAS, the
participants in a single investor-State relationship may be governed
by multiple treaties. For example, one IIA may apply to a foreign
company investing in a host State, while several other IIAs may
separately cover the shareholders (of various nationalities) in the
company, who thus participate in the investment indirectly." Even
if the shareholders and the investing company are protected under
the same treaty, their ability to file separate claims could result in
the formation of multiple tribunals hearing essentially the same
claim. In other situations, two or more investment claims can be
closely linked simply because a governmental measure affects a
large range of foreign investors. For example, after the Argentinean
economic crisis of 2001, claimants filed over 40 investment cases,
all relating to the same actions of the Argentinean Government, but
based on several different BITs. Several complex cases have been
treated as effectively "mass claims", with multiple claimants
115
A real-life example of this possibility is the CME/Lauder dispute where
one claim was brought against the Czech Republic by CME, a Dutch
company, under the Czech Republic-Netherlands BIT, and another claim
was brought by Mr. Lauder, the American owner of CME, under the Czech
Republic-United States BIT. The cases running concurrently and
relating to the conduct of the Czech Government, but adjudicated by two
different arbitral tribunals - - famously resulted in divergent outcomes. See
Ronald S. Lauder v. The Czech Republic, UNCITRAL Rules, Final Award,
3 September 2001 and CME Czech Republic B.V. v. The Czech Republic,
UNCITRAL Rules, Partial Award, 12 September 2001.
UNCTAD Series on International Investment Agreements IIView entire presentation