ClawScore · Arbitration Exposure
How to Check a Company's Arbitration Exposure (2026)
Arbitration is where a lot of large commercial disputes in India now go, and it is the exposure that is hardest to see from the outside. Unlike a court case, an arbitration is private: the proceedings and the award are confidential, there is no public cause list, and you cannot search an arbitration the way you search a suit. So checking a company's arbitration exposure is really about finding the points where an arbitration touches the court system and leaves a public trail. This guide explains those touchpoints, where they show, and why a clean court search does not mean a company has no disputes. Last verified October 2026.
- Arbitration is private: there is no public register, so you cannot search the proceedings or the award directly.
- Search the court touchpoints: Section 11 appointment, Section 9 interim relief, Section 34 set-aside, and Section 36 and 37 enforcement and appeal.
- Read the stage: a Section 34 challenge means an award already exists, which is sharper than an appointment dispute.
- Clean means little here: a clean court search is the absence of a public trail, not the absence of a dispute, so check disclosures too.
01The short answer
You cannot search arbitrations directly, because they are private and there is no public register of them. What you can do is search the court matters that an arbitration generates: an application to appoint an arbitrator under Section 11, an application for interim relief under Section 9, a petition to set aside an award under Section 34, and enforcement or appeal under Sections 36 and 37. These are filed in the High Courts or commercial courts and are public.
Search the company name on those forums, read the latest order, and treat any Section 9 or Section 34 matter as a sign of a serious underlying dispute. Then look at the company's own disclosures, where material arbitrations may be mentioned. For why the proceedings themselves stay hidden, see why arbitration data is not public.
02Why arbitration is hard to see
Arbitration is a private way of resolving disputes that the parties agree to in their contract. There is no public filing when it starts, no cause list, and the award is usually confidential. Institutional arbitrations are administered privately, and ad hoc arbitrations have no central record at all.
This means the arbitration itself is invisible to an outside checker. A company can be fighting a large arbitration and show nothing on a court search for months. The only reliable public trail appears when one side goes to court, which is why the court touchpoints are the thing to search.
03The court touchpoints
An arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 touches the courts at a few defined points, each of which leaves a public record:
| Stage | Section | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Appointment of arbitrator | Section 11 | The parties could not agree; a dispute has begun |
| Interim relief | Section 9 | Urgent protection sought; often a serious, live dispute |
| Set aside the award | Section 34 | An award exists and is being challenged |
| Enforcement and appeal | Sections 36 and 37 | An award is being enforced or an order appealed |
For the detail on the main ones, see Section 34 of the Arbitration Act and how a Section 34 set-aside works. A Section 34 petition in particular tells you an award has already been made, which is a later and sharper stage than an appointment dispute.
04Where to look
Run the search in the forums that hear these applications, and in the company's own records:
- High Courts, which hear Section 11 appointments and many Section 34 and Section 37 matters, searchable by party.
- Commercial courts, which hear arbitration applications under the commercial-courts framework.
- Company disclosures, annual reports and offer documents, where a listed or large company may disclose material arbitrations and claim amounts.
- MCA filings, to confirm the exact entity and its directors before you search.
Search the company, its former names and its group entities together. For arbitration alongside other tribunal matters, see how to track tribunal and arbitration cases.
05Reading what you find
Weigh an arbitration touchpoint by stage and by amount, not just by its existence:
- Stage. A Section 11 appointment dispute is early. A Section 34 challenge means an award already exists, and a Section 36 enforcement means someone is trying to collect on one.
- Direction. Whether the company is the one enforcing an award or the one resisting it changes what the exposure means.
- Amount. A large claim or award relative to the company's size is a real balance-sheet risk.
- Pattern. Several arbitration-related matters point to a disputatious counterparty or a troubled project.
A clean arbitration search is the least reassuring clean result there is, because the proceedings themselves never appear in public until someone goes to court.
06What a clean result actually means
A clean arbitration check means no arbitration-related court matter was found on the forums you searched, on the date you searched, under the names you used. Because arbitrations are confidential, this is weaker reassurance than for ordinary litigation: the company could be in a large arbitration right now that has simply not reached a court yet, or ever.
For this exposure in particular, combine the court search with the company's disclosures and, where it matters, a direct question to the company in diligence. Record what you covered and treat a clean result as the absence of a public trail, not the absence of a dispute. This is research to inform a decision, not legal advice.
07Where Claw fits
Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.
ClawScore, at clawscore.clawlaw.in, is Claw's litigation and criminal-risk service, and it surfaces the arbitration-related court matters a company leaves behind in one pass. You give it a company name and it searches every matter across 9,102 courts, benches and forums, the High Courts and commercial courts that hear Section 11, Section 9, Section 34 and Section 37 applications among them, and returns one scored Excel workbook: a Summary tab with a ClawScore risk band (Clean, Low, Moderate or High), a Matters tab, a Related parties tab that pulls in directors, guarantors and group entities, and a Coverage tab recording what was searched. Every finding carries a MATCH CONFIDENCE, so a similar company name is flagged for you to verify. Its Constant Monitoring runs daily, weekly or monthly scans on a watched entity list and reports what is New, Changed or Closed, so a fresh set-aside or enforcement petition is caught early. It draws on 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, and returns results in under 5 seconds. Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. Because arbitration itself is private, ClawScore can only show the court touchpoints, so pair it with the company's disclosures for the full picture.
Create a FREE Claw account to surface a company's arbitration-related court matters and set up monitoring, and use case search across Indian courts to search the company, its directors and its group.
08Sources and further reading
- eCourts Services (High Court and commercial court case status): services.ecourts.gov.in
- India Code (Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, bare text): indiacode.nic.in
- Ministry of Corporate Affairs (entity and director confirmation): mca.gov.in
- Claw: clawlaw.in
Government portals are the authoritative record. This guide is general information, not legal advice; arbitration positions in particular turn on facts a public record does not show.
09Frequently asked questions
Can I search arbitration cases against a company in India?
Not directly. Arbitration is private, with no public cause list or register and a usually confidential award. You can only search the court matters an arbitration generates, such as an application to appoint an arbitrator under Section 11, interim relief under Section 9, a set-aside petition under Section 34, and enforcement or appeal under Sections 36 and 37.
Where do arbitration-related court matters show?
Mostly in the High Courts and the commercial courts, which hear appointment, interim relief, set-aside and enforcement applications, searchable by party name. A listed or large company may also disclose material arbitrations and claim amounts in its annual report or offer documents.
What does a Section 34 matter tell me?
A Section 34 petition seeks to set aside an arbitral award, which means an award already exists and is being challenged. That is a later and sharper stage than a Section 11 appointment dispute, and it tells you the underlying dispute has already run its full course once.
Does a clean arbitration search mean there are no disputes?
No, and this is the exposure where a clean search reassures least. Because arbitrations are confidential, a company can be in a large arbitration that has not touched a court yet, or ever. Treat a clean result as the absence of a public trail and combine it with the company's disclosures.
How should I weigh an arbitration finding?
By stage, direction and amount. A set-aside or enforcement petition is more serious than an appointment dispute; whether the company is enforcing or resisting an award changes the exposure; and a large claim relative to the company's size, or several such matters, is the real risk.