In a judgment on 14 June 2017 (file no. 29 Cdo 1537/2015), the Czech Supreme Court found it was not entitled to examine an arbitration tribunal decision concerning the tribunal’s own lack of jurisdiction to hear a case under Section 15 (1) of Act No. 216/1994 Coll., on Arbitration Decisions and the Enforcement of Arbitral Awards, as amended (the Arbitration Act).
Under Section 15 (1) of the Arbitration Act, arbitrators may assess whether they have jurisdiction to hear a case and if they lack this jurisdiction, issue a decision to that effect. The Supreme Court noted that the final sentence of Section 106 (1) of the Civil Procedure Code (Act No. 99/1963 Coll.) deals with situations where both state courts and arbitration tribunals deny their competence to hear a dispute. To prevent a scenario where both a court and arbitrators refuse to hear a case because of a lack of jurisdiction (i.e. the court maintains the case should be heard by arbitrators and vice versa), the statute prescribes that the court must hear the case if arbitrators have already refused to do so. The regulation was designed to cover situations where a plaintiff first bring its case to an arbitration tribunal the denies its jurisdiction as well as cases where the plaintiff first files a claim with a state court that finds it lacks jurisdiction and refers the matter to an arbitration tribunal.
The Supreme Court, thus, concluded that state courts are bound by the decisions of arbitration tribunals to the extent that they must hear cases rejected by arbitrators under Section 15 (1) of the Arbitration Act.