## Facts

- Baker Marine (Nig.) Ltd. and Danos & Curole Marine Contractors, Inc. agreed to submit a joint bid to provide barge services to Chevron (Nig.) Ltd. for offshore oil operations in Nigeria.
- After the bid succeeded, Baker Marine and Danos entered a contract with Chevron to provide the services.
- The contracts incorporated an arbitration clause requiring UNCITRAL arbitration seated in Lagos, Nigeria, and selecting Nigerian law for arbitration procedure and contract interpretation, while also referencing the New York Convention.
- Disputes arose, and two Lagos arbitral panels issued awards for Baker Marine: about $2.23 million against Danos and about $750,000 against Chevron.
- Baker Marine sought enforcement in Nigeria; Chevron and Danos challenged the awards, and the Nigerian Federal High Court set aside both awards under Nigerian law.
- Baker Marine then petitioned a federal district court in New York to confirm the same awards under the Federal Arbitration Act’s New York Convention provisions.

## Issues

1. Whether a U.S. court may confirm a foreign arbitral award under the New York Convention when a competent court at the arbitral seat has set the award aside.
2. Whether a U.S. court may disregard the seat court’s annulment based on differences between U.S. vacatur standards and the foreign annulment grounds.

## Decision

- The Second Circuit affirmed denial of confirmation of both awards.
- The court held that Nigeria was the Convention “primary jurisdiction” because the arbitrations were seated in Lagos and governed by Nigerian law; the United States was a “secondary jurisdiction” where enforcement was sought.
- Under Article V(1)(e) of the New York Convention, a court may refuse enforcement when the award has been set aside by a competent authority in the country where, or under whose law, the award was made.
- The court declined to apply U.S. domestic arbitration standards to revive awards annulled by the primary-jurisdiction court, absent extraordinary circumstances.
- Baker Marine did not show corruption, fraud, or fundamental procedural unfairness in the Nigerian annulment proceedings that could justify enforcing annulled awards.

## Legal Principles

- Under the New York Convention, courts at the arbitral seat (or under the law of which the award was made) have primary responsibility for supervising the arbitration; other courts generally act as secondary jurisdictions in enforcement.
- Article V(1)(e) permits refusal of recognition and enforcement when the award has been set aside or suspended by a competent authority of the primary-jurisdiction state.
- Comity ordinarily supports giving effect to a primary-jurisdiction annulment, especially when the parties selected that jurisdiction’s law and seat in their contracts.
- A secondary-jurisdiction court should not substitute its own arbitration-law standards for those applied by the primary-jurisdiction court merely because the foreign standards differ.
- Any discretion to enforce an annulled award is reserved for exceptional cases involving serious defects in the foreign annulment process (e.g., corruption or denial of basic due process).

## Conclusion

Because competent Nigerian courts at the arbitral seat annulled the awards and Baker Marine showed no exceptional basis to disregard those judgments, the Second Circuit held that the district court properly refused to confirm the awards under the New York Convention.


Baker Marine (Nig.) Ltd. v. Chevron (Nig.) Ltd., 191 F.3d 194 (2d Cir. 1999)