In Civil Procedure 101, law students learn a usual course of procedure that begins with the filing of a suit, proceeds through discovery, and concludes in a trial and possibly an appeal. Enforcement of a judgment through that effort is considered, if at all, to arise at the end of the process. In the years since the 2008 financial and economic crisis, however, ensuring at the outset of a case that a judgment ultimately will be enforceable has taken on new salience. This is particularly true in cross-border disputes, in which the assets against which enforcement will be sought are often located overseas in the hands of parties whose U.S.-facing business might not be enough to ensure their compliance.
Ensuring enforceability requires counsel and clients to move the question from the end of the process to the beginning, and to determine whether a judgment or award can and will in fact be paid before the costs of the process are undertaken. To do so effectively sometimes requires preliminary discovery of assets and preliminary encumbrance of those assets. Different jurisdictions, of course, have different rules and different tools on offer. As this article describes, New York also authorizes such steps in certain circumstances, although the jurisprudence on these points remains somewhat thin.
This content has been archived. It is available through our partners, LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law.
To view this content, please continue to their sites.
Not a Lexis Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
Not a Bloomberg Law Subscriber?
Subscribe Now
LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law are third party online distributors of the broad collection of current and archived versions of ALM's legal news publications. LexisNexis® and Bloomberg Law customers are able to access and use ALM's content, including content from the National Law Journal, The American Lawyer, Legaltech News, The New York Law Journal, and Corporate Counsel, as well as other sources of legal information.
For questions call 1-877-256-2472 or contact us at [email protected]
