Oglinda & Partners successfully represented a French company in an international arbitration, achieving full admission of claims for direct costs, indirect costs and profit due for supplementary works and time prorogation

Oglinda & Partners proved that duration of a Design and Works Contract (Yellow FIDIC) has been extended due to the employer’s failure to finalise in due time the expropriation, to achieve the construction permit and to grant full access on Site in accordance with the contractual Time Schedule.

Oglinda & Partners lawyers demonstrated that expropriation is a result obligation and that the technical documentation for expropriation falls under the employer’s scope of contract, this way managing to dismiss arguments in defence that argued the existence of an alleged pre-condition duty of the constructor.

This international arbitration, held under Romanian law, was defined by a high level of complexity regarding evidence assessment: a large number of witnesses; technical expertise and quantum expertise. The difficulty consisted in the fact that the technical expertise report had to determine which activities from the Design were obstructed, taking into account that for some partial works the employer granted access on Site.

Beside representation in front of the arbitral tribunal, Oglinda & Partners’ team that included Eugen Sarbu (Partner), Mihai Ionescu-Balea (Senior Associate), Ana-Maria Damian (Senior Associate) and Tasiana Timofticiuc (Associate), assisted client’s technical personnel in drafting technical explanations on specific aspects of the Contract performance at the expert request.

Moreover, even though the Quantum Expert Report was unclear, Oglinda & Partners lawyers persuaded the tribunal that in addition to direct and indirect costs, the client is entitled also to profit.

Oglinda & Partners stands up as a Romanian traditional leading law firm specialized in international arbitration. Its lawyers coordinated the first emergency arbitrator procedure in Romania and in the last 20 years were involved, as lawyers or arbitrators, in more than 300 arbitral procedures in front of Romanian and foreign arbitral institutions like ICC, VIAC, LCIA, SCC, SHAC or Eastern Europe Courts of Arbitration, covering a wide range of sectors and industries.