This work sheds light on the question of whether and under what conditions a party who files a claim before a state court instead of submitting the dispute to arbitration as agreed upon before in the arbitration agreement renders themselves liable in damages - a topic which has become increasingly important in arbitral practice in the past decades, not only due to the remarkable decisions of the European Court of Justice in West Tankers and Gazprom. In the course of the work, the author analyses the legal bases to the availability of damages in this specific case in Germany, Switzerland and England, giving due regard to the approaches followed by German, Swiss and English scholars and practitioners as well as in arbitral practice.