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Case 370: MAL 8
Zimbabwe: High Court (Judge Smith); Judgement No. HH 144-2000
24 and 31 May 2000
Bitumat Ltd. v. Multicom Ltd.
Original in English
Unpublished
The plaintiff sued the defendant in the High Court for money owed in respect of the sale and delivery of goods and the hire of a slurry machine. Defendant filed a special plea that the Court proceedings should be stayed, claiming that the parties had entered into an agreement under which disputes were required to be referred to arbitration.
The plaintiff argued that correspondence between the parties showed that the defendant had agreed to have the matter dealt with in Court.
The Court held that where parties have entered into an agreement which contains an arbitration clause which is intended to be widely cast, as was the position in the present case, the Court "should not be astute in trying to reduce the ambit of the arbitration clause". In addition, the Court held that, whilst it was true that parties to an arbitration agreement could abandon it and proceed to Court, the decision to do so must be clearly evidenced. In the present case, the correspondence was not sufficiently explicit to show such an agreement. Accordingly, the special plea was upheld and the Court referred the parties to arbitration according to MAL article 8.
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