The Hague Judgments Convention - and Perhaps Beyond

The Hague Judgments Convention - and Perhaps Beyond

Description

Arthur von Mehren has thought about recognition of foreign country judgments for well over half of his professional life, as an innovative scholar, as a teacher, and as negotiator on behalf of the United States. In the 1970s Arthur tried valiantly to help negotiate a bilateral judgments treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom, building on the invitation in the Brussels Convention (Article 59)3 that by such a treaty domiciliaries of third countries—i.e., the United States—could avoid the situation where, for example, a French plaintiff could secure a judgment against an American domiciliary on an exorbitant basis and then enforce that judgment in Great Britain, where the American (individual or corporation) had assets. Arthur will recall a very long lunch in Cambridge, Massachusetts intended to bring him into direct contact with the British insurance industry, whose leaders were very concerned about potential enforcement of American product liability judgments against British makers of toys or medicines. It was not clear that such a judgment would be denied enforcement absent a treaty, but the British industry, and eventually the British government wanted to make sure that no treaty would require enforcement of such a judgment. Arthur did his best to be understanding, even offering an amendment to the draft being discussed under which the court where enforcement was sought could examine the award of damages in the first forum-presumably by an out-of control American jury—and reduce the award to an amount more in line with awards rendered in its own jurisdiction. Such a provision might well have ended any chance of ratification of the U.S.-British treaty by the United States Senate. But the proposed treaty never got that far-proving once again the truth of Churchill's description of Britain and America as two nations divided by a common language. Arthur was disappointed but not deterred. If it was not possible to achieve a judgments convention one-on-one, why not utilize the skills and prestige of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which in recent years had achieved substantial success in multilateral conventions on Legalization of Documents, Service of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents, Taking Evidence Abroad, and Child Abduction. Arthur persuaded the U.S. government to try, and both he and the State Department are still trying. The crowning achievement of Arthur von Mehren's career—if it is achieved—will be the Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters. As this volume goes to press (Spring 2002) the success of the project is very much in doubt. Many people have already written it off. We think the project is worth saving, and we want in Part II to offer some suggestions for Arthur and his colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic—not as an American wish list, but as a basis for narrowing the gap that now seems to divide the negotiators. In Part III, we describe briefly a project stimulated by the current negotiations that would rationalize judgments practice in the United States even without a successful outcome at The Hague.

Source Publication

Law and Justice in a Multistate World: Essays in Honor of Arthur T. von Mehren

Source Editors/Authors

James A. R. Nafziger, Symeon C. Symeonides

Publication Date

2002

The Hague Judgments Convention - and Perhaps Beyond

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