The disputes arising from sport relations are very particular and because of that - most often settled in specialized courts of sport arbitration. For an arbitral award to be enforceable in Lithuania it has to be recognized by the national courts. Normally, the non-recognition of a foreign arbitration award is rare both in Lithuania and internationally. However, a recent decision adopted by the Lithuanian Court of Appeal in 2010 painted a picture that in Lithuania the arbitration awards regarding a dispute arising between a professional sportsman and a sport club will not be recognized and enforced at all.
Qualification of sports relation
In the mentioned decision (case No 2T-164/2010) the Court of Appeal ruled that a dispute which arose from a claim by the basketball player to a sport club to pay remuneration should be qualified as a labour dispute. According to the Lithuanian Law on Commercial Arbitration, labour related disputes are non-arbitrable i.e. cannot be solved by arbitration. The Court of Appeal applied the clause in the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of the Foreign Arbitral awards of 1958, which allows refusing recognition of an arbitral award if the dispute under the national law is non-arbitrable.
Previous case law on the issue
Such position expressed by the Court of Appeal was unexpected in the view of the existing Lithuanian case law.
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