Enforcement of foreign judgments

In law, the enforcement of foreign judgments is the recognition and enforcement in one jurisdiction of judgments rendered in another ("foreign") jurisdiction. Foreign judgments may be recognized based on bilateral or multilateral treaties or understandings, or unilaterally without an express international agreement.

The "recognition" of a foreign judgment occurs when the court of one country or jurisdiction accepts a judicial decision made by the courts of another "foreign" country or jurisdiction, and issues a judgment in substantially identical terms without rehearing the substance of the original lawsuit.

In American legal terminology, a "foreign" judgment means a judgment from another state in the United States or from a foreign country. To differentiate between the two, more precise terminology used is "foreign-country judgment" (for judgments from another country) and "foreign sister-state judgment" (from a different state within the United States).

Once a foreign judgment is recognized, the party who was successful in the original case can then seek its "enforcement" in the recognizing country. If the foreign judgment is a money judgment and the debtor has assets in the recognizing jurisdiction, the judgment creditor has access to all the enforcement remedies as if the case had originated in the recognizing country, e.g. garnishment, judicial sale, etc. If some other form of judgment was obtained, e.g. affecting status, granting injunctive relief, etc., the recognizing court will make whatever orders are appropriate to make the original judgment effective.

Foreign judgments may be recognized either unilaterally or based on principles of comity, i.e. mutual deference between courts in different countries. In English courts, the bases of the enforcement of foreign judgments are not comity, but the doctrine of obligation.

Between two different States in the United States, enforcement is generally required under the "Full Faith and Credit Clause" (Article IV, Section 1) of the U.S. Constitution, which compels a State to give another State's Judgment an effect as if it were local. This usually requires some sort of an abbreviated application on notice, or docketing. Between one State in the United States, and a foreign country, Canada, for example, the prevailing concept is comity. The Court in the United States, in most cases, will unilaterally enforce the foreign judgment, without proof of diplomatic reciprocity, either under judge-made law or under specific statutes.

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Wikipedia