The Singapore Supreme Court on Tuesday set aside an arbitral award passed by a tribunal presided over by former Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra after finding that nearly half of the contents of the award had been “copy-pasted” from earlier awards passed by the same presiding arbitrator, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Justice Steven Chong in the Court of Appeal said that new arguments in the matter were made because of “the slightly different factual matrix presented by the arbitration”.

“Despite this, the parallel awards were used as templates in drafting the award to a very substantial degree,” the bench was quoted as saying. “It is undisputed that at least 212 paragraphs from the parallel awards were retained in the 451-paragraph award. This has several implications.”

The dispute pertains to a contract between a special-purpose vehicle managing freight corridors in India and a consortium of three companies involved in infrastructure projects.

The dispute was about whether the consortium was entitled to additional payments under their contract following a notification by the Indian government in 2017 that increased minimum wages, Bar and Bench reported.

The matter was taken to arbitration in Singapore under the International Chamber of Commerce rules after negotiations failed. The tribunal ruled in favour of the consortium in November 2023.

Besides Misra, the tribunal comprised former Madhya Pradesh High Court judge Justice Krishn Kumar Lahoti and former Jammu and Kashmir High Court Chief Justice Gita Mittal.

Misra was the chief justice of India between August 2017 and October 2018.

The arbitral award was appealed before the Singapore High Court on the grounds that the tribunal had copied and pasted extensively from its two previous awards in related arbitration, having the same presiding arbitrator.

The High Court is the lower division of Singapore’s Supreme Court. The Court of Appeal, which set aside the arbitral award on Tuesday, is the higher division.

While all three tribunals were chaired by Misra, the co-arbitrators were not involved in the parallel arbitration, according to Bar and Bench.

The High Court had set aside the award, saying that the similarities between the present award and previous parallel awards showed a failure to independently assess the parties’ stance, Live Law reported.

The order was challenged in the Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeal ruled that while an arbitrator can refer to the rationale used in earlier matters to solve similar disputes, in this case, the cases had different facts, Live Law reported.

It is rare for a court to name the arbitrators while hearing such an appeal, The Indian Express reported. The newspaper said that it had contacted Misra, but that he was unavailable for a comment on the matter.