Saturday, April 21, 2007

Extra credit paper re foreign judgment enforcement

During the research consultations, I helped some very nice grad students who are in an MBA business law class. They can do an extra credit paper on several topics, including enforcement of foreign judgments if the trial/decision in the country where the judgment was made was "fair." This is what I learned:

There can be two types of such judgments, 1.for money and 2. arbitration
Searching for "foreign money judgments" is better than "foreign judgments"

A better word than "fair" to search is "impartial" which is the term used in the Uniform Foreign Country Money Judgments Recognition Act of 1962. (This has been adopted by a number of U.S. states, including New York.) There is a revision, made in 2005, that has been adopted by only a few states. The explanation for the revisions is very easy to understand and is available from the web site of the Uniform Law Commissioners, which also mentions some cases.

I found some cases searching foreign money judgments in Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw.
There are also some law review articles, and some recent cases in Lexis-Nexis law reviews and legal news. (The assignment asks for recent cases.)

The students and I didn't search for arbitration awards. (The paper is to be no more than 8 pages.)

We limited our searches to foreign money judgments being enforced in the U.S., but Lexis-Nexis brought up some Canadian cases (involving American companies that had formed joint ventures with Canadian firms to do business elsewhere and then problems arose. We didn't pursue enforcing judgments in other countries.

I hope this is helpful if anyone else helps students with this question.

No comments: