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The Supreme Court has established an economic approach to the qualification of shareholders as consumers or entrepreneurs for the purposes of the Consumer Protection Act. This was consolidated by a new decision in which it ruled on whether a shareholder, holding 50% of the shares in a company and acting as managing director thereof, was to be considered a consumer for the purposes of consumer protection law.

In a recent case the Supreme Court was called on to decide whether an arbitral tribunal's disregard of Section 598 of the Code of Civil Procedure constitutes a violation of a party's right to be heard and justifies setting aside an award. According to Section 598, a tribunal is to hold a hearing at an appropriate stage of the proceedings if one party so requests and the parties did not previously agree to exclude the possibility of a hearing.

Two relevant questions of Austrian law were recently raised in a dispute between an Austrian distributor and a US company. The first question was whether an arbitration agreement remains valid when it provides for arbitration abroad in a case in which Austrian mandatory rules may govern the merits of the dispute; the second was whether interim measures can be granted to ensure the enforcement of awards rendered abroad.

The Austrian Supreme Court recently addressed for the first time some of the uncertainties surrounding the relevance of Section 617 of the Code of Civil Procedure in enforcement proceedings. Section 617 of the code was introduced by the Arbitration Act in 2006 and contains several provisions intended to protect consumers from becoming involved in arbitral proceedings.

A US and a Cypriot party applied for the recognition and enforcement in Austria of an arbitral award made in the United Kingdom in proceedings conducted under the London Court of International Arbitration Rules. The Supreme Court had to deal with the question of whether all the formal requirements for the enforcement of the award had been fulfilled.

In a recent decision the Supreme Court was asked to set aside an award rendered by an ad hoc tribunal deciding a dispute between Austria and several private persons, who were the heirs of the former owners of Gustav Klimt’s portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl. The heirs sought to set aside an award which denied their claim for the picture's restitution. The Supreme Court denied the challenge.

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