AKT Todorovic and Partners Prevails in a BAT Arbitration

It is with great pleasure that we can announce that AKT Todorovic and Partners, representing Mr Aleksandar Kostoski as a respondent, has prevailed in a Basketball Arbitration Tribunal (BAT) Arbitration 1730/21 IBC Balkan v Kostoski. The sole arbitrator, Klaus Reichert SC, has issued his award on 21 March 2022 and has completely dismissed all the substantive claims against Mr Kostoski, and has ordered full administrative costs to be borne by IBC Balkan as claimant, as well as awarding the legal representation fees to our client. This is a fantastic and well-deserved outcome for our client, and AKT has been happy to assist to reach this just result.

The AKT team on this case has been led by Dr Ivan Todorović and Dr Velimir Živković as of counsel, with generous support from the whole AKT staff. The case has involved interesting issues revolving around both admissibility of the dispute and alleged breaches of contract, and has somewhat unusually been marked by two rounds of submissions. Equally interestingly, as we have discussed on this blog, substantive issues were decided by applying ex aequo et bono method of decision-making (see https://www.akt.rs/en/publication/ex-aequo-et-bono-decision-making-in-international-arbitration:-risks-and-benefits), which allowed for legal arguments to involve sources such as the transnational legal principles, derived e.g. from the lex mercatoria base (see https://www.trans-lex.org/).

There is a possibility for the (unreasoned) award to be made available publicly in due course at the BAT website (https://www.fiba.basketball/bat/awards) and we look forward to assisting you further in any matters relating to sports law and arbitration.

Dr Velimir Živković