Investment Arbitration Reporter has the scoop:
A tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration has issued a decision dismissing a high-profile case between cigarette multinational Philip Morris and the Commonwealth of Australia.
The PCA website indicates that a Decision on Jurisdiction and Admissibility was issued on December 17, 2015. A source involved in the case has confirmed to IAReporter that the tribunal has dismissed the investor’s claims of breach of the Australia-Hong Kong bilateral investment treaty.
...
The tribunal’s detailed reasoning for rejecting jurisdiction is not yet known. The award will not become public until the parties agree on the redaction of any confidential information contained in the award.
Jurisdictional grounds is a little frustrating, because I was hoping for some substance to talk about. How would an early 1990s version of an investment treaty apply to plain packaging laws? We may never know!
And we can't even talk about the jurisdictional ruling, because it's not public yet. (I'm imagining this outraged blog post by a business group: "Secret international tribunal rules against job creator!").
The Philip Morris press release is here.
