General counsel know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a complaint and to guide litigation through the trial court and the appeal. Perhaps less familiar is being on the receiving end of an opponent’s efforts to enforce a judgment rendered outside the United States. The litigation has taken place abroad under different rules and a different constitution, and maybe in a different language. Now the plaintiff arrives in a U.S. court with judgment in hand, seeking to invoke the domestic court’s enforcement powers.
Some commentators, including the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, have noted an increase in this type of litigation. Such cases seem to be on the uptick in Pennsylvania, although they are not yet flooding the dockets. Westlaw identifies about 10 cases dealing directly with recognition of foreign judgments. But more than half of those cases were decided in the last six years—despite the fact that the state statute governing recognition of foreign judgments was passed nearly 25 years ago. As a point of comparison, the situation is similar in Delaware. That state’s recognition statute is more than 15 years old, but virtually all of the handful of cases that cite it were decided in the last eight years.
