Revue - Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage N°1 - 2024 - 132

SPÉCIAL « ARBITRAGE ET JEUX OLYMPIQUES »
Personally, I believe lawyers have a special duty here. It is to some extent a
technical issue that needs to be considered properly. Parties, and we will see this
later, may not always perceive the importance of the issue.
When has an appellant standing to appeal? It is recognized that this requires an
interest worthy of legal protection against a decision. In other words, a legitimate
interest to act against a decision. This requirement is fulfilled if the appellant is
directly and concretely affected by a decision.
When has a respondent standing to be sued? Let us look for example to the
situation of a shareholders meeting. Here it is easy: a shareholder may challenge
the decision and name the Corporation as respondent. But how does this work in
sport-related matters?
II. - Standing to appeal and standing to be sued:
specificities in sports-related disputes
On the active side: In sports-related matters, the individual or the legal entity
that is a direct or indirect member of a sport federation that has issued a decision
will likely have a right to file an appeal against such decision, based already on his/
her/its membership. However, membership is in sport not always a plain thing, and
we heard this morning about the pyramidal structure of sport. True is that there are
direct and indirect members. While a national federation may be direct member of
an international federation, an athlete or a club may be indirect members.
For the standing to appeal it is under the jurisprudence of CAS and of the Swiss
Tribunal Federal admitted that in general (exceptions may exist, but we don't have
the time to look at those), in addition to membership there are two additional
important requirements: first, the member shall not have consented to the decision;
second, he/she must have an interest worthy of protection.
On the passive side: in sports-related matters, standing to be sued will be
normally on the federation or the association of which a body has issued the
decision to be appealed. However, there are important exceptions to be aware of.
Several sports decisions are of vertical nature: disciplinary sanctions for violence in
a stadium, a ban because of doping, a disqualification because of match fixing: the
sanctioned player, athlete, club will have to file the appeal against the federation
that issued the sanction. This is relatively easy.
But sport decisions can be also of horizontal nature. This is the case when a
federation decides a dispute between two members, like a financial claim between
two clubs because of a transfer of a player. In such a situation, jurisprudence and
doctrine are insofar unanimous in saying that the appeal must be filed by the member
against the other member. In my view, shared by other esteemed colleagues, the
federation that has issued the decision must be named as co-respondent. For sure:
it does not hurt. But this, again, is a matter that would need a longer debate.
The difficult cases are those where the above dichotomy vertical/horizontal is
of no help. Let us look at an example out of the vast jurisprudence of CAS.
Let us imagine that a federation, before an international tournament starts,
disqualifies a football club, let us call it FC Escroc, from an international club
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The Paris Journal of International Arbitration 2024‑1
Revue - Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage N°1 - 2024

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