Description

No one sums it up better than Prof. William W. Park in his well-known treatise, Non-Signatories and International Contracts: An Arbitrator's Dilemma1 , “the term ‘non-signatory’ remains useful for what might be called ‘less-than-obvious’ parties to an arbitration clause: individuals and entities that never put pen to paper, but still should be part of the arbitration under the circumstances of the relevant business relationship…the expression remains potentially misleading, suggesting that a lack of signature in itself reduces the validity of an arbitration agreement. Most significantly, the fact that a ‘non-signatory’ might be bound to arbitrate does not dispense with the need for an arbitration agreement. Rather, it means only that the agreement takes its binding force through some circumstance other than the formality of signature”.