Let’s go to court

Let’s go to court

Dubai courts are suddenly finding themselves flooded with cases thanks to a rising number of property and trade disputes in the city.

May 19, 2009 12:39 by Aarti Nagraj

Thanks to the credit crunch the number of trade disputes at the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DCCI) doubled in April 2009, reports The National. And the Dubai International Arbitration Centre (DIAC) received 40 trade dispute cases last month, compared with 20 a month earlier, taking the total number of cases in the first four months of the year to 80.

According to the DCCI, there were only 28 arbitration cases in the whole of 2008.

The DCCI legal services department received 156 cases of business mediation in April 2009, and 322 cases in the first four months of this year as compared to 182 cases for the same period last year, an increase of 80 percent.

The DIFC (Dubai International Finance Centre)-LCIA (London Court of International Arbitration), a joint arbitration centre formed in 2008, has also reported seeing an increase in the number of arbitrations in 2009. It has confirmed that it is increasing the number of case handlers to deal with the increasing caseload.

But it’s not just the arbitration courts which are being inundated; 520 cases have also been registered with Dubai’s Property Court this year. Chief Judge Mohammed Yousuf Sulaiman, deputy director of Dubai Courts, told Emirates Business last week that the court has already passed judgment on 145 property-related cases.

The Dubai Property Court was set up in September 2008, and will be getting a mediation centre soon. According to Sulaiman this will reduce the number of cases going to court. “In the mediation centre, there will be a panel of real estate experts who will screen cases and try and resolve them before they are passed to the court,” he said.

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Tags: arbitration, cases, Construction, defaults, dispute, Dubai, Financial Crisis, law, legal issues, property court, RERA