Introduction
The dispute in DVV v DVW and another matter [2026] SGHC 164 arose out of a construction project undertaken through an unincorporated joint venture (the “JV”) between the applicant and the respondent. Under the joint venture agreement (the “JVA”), the applicant held a 30% participation share and the respondent 70%. The JVA also provided that, as between the parties, their rights, duties and obligations vis-à-vis each other were several and not joint, and proportionate to their participation shares.
The JV was awarded the project and subsequently engaged the applicant as subcontractor under a separate subcontract (the “Subcontract”). The Subcontract governed the relationship between the JV, as the main contractor, and the applicant, as the subcontractor.
Disputes later arose under both the JVA and the Subcontract, resulting in two separate arbitrations: (1) an SIAC arbitration under the JVA (the “JVA Arbitration”), before an arbitral tribunal (the “JVA Tribunal”), and (2) an ad hoc domestic arbitration under the Subcontract (the “Subcontract Arbitration”), before a separate arbitral tribunal (the “SCA Tribunal”).
The setting aside applications before the Court concerned only the Subcontract Arbitration. In the Subcontract Arbitration, the SCA Tribunal issued the Partial Final Award and Partial Costs Award. In the Partial Final Award, the SCA Tribunal only valued the parties’ claims and counterclaims, but did not make immediate payment orders. Instead, it reserved jurisdiction to make final payment orders after questions of indemnity or contribution of liabilities between the JV members under the JVA had been dealt with in the JVA Arbitration by the JVA Tribunal. The applicant sought to set aside both the Partial Final Award and Partial Costs Award.
This month’s Insights article focuses on the applicant’s two grounds of challenge and why they failed.
No excess of jurisdiction: an alleged failure to decide is not an ultra petita complaint
The applicant argued that the SCA Tribunal had exceeded its jurisdiction under s 48(1)(a)(iv) of the Arbitration Act 2001 by failing to decide who should pay whom and by effectively leaving that issue to the JVA Tribunal.
The Court rejected the applicant’s argument. It held that s 48(1)(a)(iv) is engaged only where the SCA Tribunal has decided something outside its mandate, something it was not asked to decide (i.e. ultra petita challenges). It does not extend to the converse case, where the SCA Tribunal is said to have failed to deal with a matter within the parties’ submissions. Such a complaint is an infra petita complaint, which must instead be brought under s 48(1)(a)(vii) as a breach of the rules of natural justice.
As the applicant did not invoke the ground of s 48(1)(a)(vii), the complaint could not be recast as one of natural justice and it was not for the Court to adjudicate a ground the applicant chose not to advance.
The Court further held that, even leaving aside the question of the proper ground of challenge, the SCA Tribunal neither delegated nor exceeded its jurisdiction but merely reserved its jurisdiction to make a final payment order. In this regard, it was common ground that the SCA Tribunal had no jurisdiction to decide questions of apportionment and indemnity under the JVA, which was a separate contract with its own arbitration clause and tribunal, namely the JVA Tribunal. The SCA Tribunal therefore could not have delegated that function to the JVA Tribunal. Nor had the SCA Tribunal delegated the making of the payment order to the JVA Tribunal, it had expressly reserved jurisdiction to make that order later.
No breach of arbitral procedure: this was really a complaint about the substance of the award
The applicant also relied on s 48(1)(a)(v), arguing that the agreed arbitral procedure required the SCA Tribunal to decide all claims and counterclaims, on both liability and quantum, and to make a dispositive order for payment.
Again, the Court rejected the applicant’s challenge on this ground. It held that what the applicant impugns is not any procedure the SCA Tribunal failed to follow, but the substance of the decision on the form the award should take.
The SCA Tribunal had considered four possible forms of award and chose one under which the parties’ claims and counterclaims were valued, but payment was reserved pending the JVA Tribunal’s determination of apportionment issues. The applicant’s real complaint was that the SCA Tribunal should instead have adopted a different form of award and made immediate payment orders. The Court held that this is fundamentally not a complaint about the arbitral procedure at all, but a challenge to the substance of the SCA Tribunal’s award and to the merits of its conclusion on the form it should take.
The Court further held that, in any event, there was no agreed arbitral procedure requiring an immediate payment order. The form of the award had been contested throughout the Subcontract Arbitration, the parties had been unable to agree on it, and the SCA Tribunal had invited submissions precisely because there was no common position.
Costs award stood or fell with the main challenge
The applicant also sought to set aside the Partial Costs Award in which the SCA Tribunal, again, valued costs but reserved any payment order.
The Court dismissed this application for the same reasons as set out above.
Key takeaways
First, a complaint that a tribunal failed to decide an issue is not an ultra petita complaint and cannot be shoehorned into an excess of jurisdiction challenge.
Second, parties cannot recast disagreements with the tribunal’s substantive reasoning as complaints about arbitral procedure. If the real objection goes to the tribunal’s choice of relief or form of award, the Court will not intervene as it is well-established that the court’s role is supervisory and not appellate.
Third, where the contracting vehicle is an unincorporated joint venture, parties should think carefully at the contracting and drafting stage about how liabilities are to be allocated and recovered both as between the JV members themselves and vis-à-vis third parties.
