District Court Stays US Case Seeking to Enforce a Foreign Arbitral Award

In 2015, an arbitration panel in Paris found the Republic of Uzbekistan liable to Oxus Gold PLC for approximately $13 million, due to its expropriation of two gold mines. Oxus’s expenses in the arbitration were funded by Gretton Ltd., a litigation funder, and Oxus had assigned the proceeds of an arbitration award to Gretton in 2012. Although Oxus obtained recognition of the award from a Parisian court, in 2016 it appealed to a French appellate court to set aside the arbitration award to the extent it denied Oxus’s claims. Uzbekistan opposed the appeal and sought to vacate the entire award. In 2018, while the French appeal was pending, Gretton filed a petition against Uzbekistan in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to enforce the previously recognized award. In response, Uzbekistan moved for dismissal of the case or, in the alternative, a stay of the case pending the decision of the French appellate court. The district court issued the requested stay of the U.S. proceeding in Gretton Ltd. v. Republic of Uzbekistan. In this article, partner Holly Weiss discusses the district court’s stay of this case seeking to enforce a foreign arbitral award.