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 English law, there is a clear distinction between recognition of foreign judgments, and enforcement of foreign judgments. Recognition means treating the claim as having been determined in favour of one of the litigating parties. This is an acknowledgment of foreign competence and of the settling of a dispute, known as res judicata. Enforcement, by contrast, is the implementation of the judgment. 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.