In a landmark judgment issued on 16 October 2025, the Abu Dhabi Court of Cassation recognised that an arbitration agreement in a main construction contract may extend to subsequent or successive contracts if there is a sufficient link between the main contract and the subsequent contracts. The judgment sheds light on the possibility to extend an arbitration agreement in the case of successive agreements which is often the case in construction projects.

The case involved a main construction contract containing an arbitration clause agreed between the project owner and a main contractor, followed by several appendices covering additional works related to the same project entered into by the project owner, the main contractors and subcontractors. The appendices therefore included subcontractors that were not parties to the main contract. None of the appendices made express reference to the arbitration clause contained in the main construction contract. When a dispute later  arose between the project owner, the contractor and sub-contractors, the main contractor argued that there was an arbitration clause, while one of the subcontractors objected to this argument, claiming that there was no arbitration agreement in the appendices it had signed, and that the arbitration clause contained in the main contract did not extend to the appendices as it was not a party to that main contract and there was no reference to the arbitration clause in the appendices. The project owner also argued that the arbitration clause does not apply, since there are other parties — namely, the subcontractors — who are not included in the main contract and the contracts they signed do not include any reference to arbitration, and therefore, jurisdiction should lie with the courts.

The Court of Cassation took a pragmatic view, that since the project owner, and the contractor were parties of the main contract and appendices and that the appendices entered into by the sub-contractor were linked to the main contract, that there was a single legal relationship with respect to one construction project that cannot be split between the courts and an arbitral tribunal. According to the Court, since the facts, obligations, and parties all revolve around one common project, the dispute should be heard by one single forum. The Court therefore concluded that the arbitration clause in the main contract naturally extends to its appendices, even in the absence of an express reference in the appendices, if those appendices are simply extensions of the original agreement.

The Court did not confine itself to a rigid interpretation of Article 7 of Federal Law No. (6) of 2018 on Arbitration which requires a written consent of the parties but instead looked at the legal relationship as a whole, interpreting the parties’ intentions in light of the unity of the project and their mutual obligations — not merely through the literal wording of the parties’ agreement. Through this reasoning, the Court established that while arbitration cannot be presumed, it applies where the legal relationships and facts in dispute are unified and inseparable.

By adopting this view, the Court moved away from a rigid, literal reading of agreements and opened the door to a more balanced interpretation — one that reconciles the parties’ intent with the unity of construction projects. The focus is no longer on whether there is a reference to arbitration in a subsequent contract, but rather on whether this subsequent contract is sufficiently linked to the main contract to justify the application of the arbitration clause contained in the main contract. 

For further information, please contact Sherif Maher, Alexa Hall, Abdelmajid Alsalous and Tom Anderson.