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Amendments to the Foreign Judgments Enforcement Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2016

Chaim I. Goldwater
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Legislation
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Israel Law Review , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 1975 , pp. 247 - 251
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press and The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1975

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References

1 (1958) 12 L.S.I. 82.

2 Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance, Drayton, II, p. 809Google Scholar, and other enactments mentioned in sec. 12 of the Foreign Judgments Enforcement Law.

3 (1963) 17 P.D. 2032.

4 See Dicey, & Morris, , The Conflict of Laws (9th ed., 1973) 1022Google Scholar, and authorities there cited.

5 (1964) (II) 18 P.D. 374.

6 So far, the only international conventions of this nature that have come into effect are those concluded between Israel and Austria, (1966) K.A. 701, and between Israel and the United Kingdom (1970) K.A. 750.

7 It is submitted that this requirement may be fulfilled in respect of judgments emanating from a particular country even in the absence of a specific convention between Israel and that country, as long as its laws provide for enforcement of foreign judgments generally and there is no reason to suspect discrimination in respect of Israeli judgments.

8 (1974) H.H. no. 1116, p. 172.

9 Levontin, A. V., Conflict of Laws with Reference to Transnational Contracts (1968) 73 at n. 243.Google Scholar Prof. Levontin refers to Savigny's well-known statement regarding the extension of a domestic rule to a foreign situation, constituting a conflictual norm of the forum.

10 Convention with Austria, Article 5 (1), Convention with the United Kingdom, Article 3 (2) (d); see references to these conventions, supra n. 6.

11 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters (concluded February 1, 1971), Article 5 (1), in (1973) Recueil des Conventions de la Haye 106. As of September 1974, this Convention had not yet entered into force. It has not yet been signed by Israel.

12 Sec. 4 (1) (a) (V) — among the cases where registered judgments must be set aside; but cf. Arbitration Act, sec. 37 (d) which provides that no foreign arbitral award may be enforced if such enforcement would be “contrary to the public policy or the law of England”.

13 Restatement of the Law, Second: Conflict of Laws 2d, §117. Repugnancy to public policy can only be raised as a defence against a judgment of a foreign nation, but not against that of a “sister state”.

14 Or in conjunction with repugnancy to the rules of natural justice: see Article 5 (1) of The Hague Convention referred to supra n. 11.

15 The Israeli statute requires proof by the party relying on the judgment that it is not repugnant to public policy, and does not, as is more usual, treat nonconformity with public policy as a defence to its enforcement.

16 See the distinction made between “ordre public interne” and “ordre public externe”, following Savigny, in Funk-Schlesinger v. Minister of the Interior, (1963) 17 P.D. 231, 256, per Sussmann J.

17 Not necessarily in the context of foreign judgments, but the general principles apply to this field also. See e.g. Mazor v. Kirschenbaum (1956) 10 P.D. 1479 and Beck v. The Israel Bar (1966) (II) 20 P.D. 617 (non-application of Nazi discriminatory legislation); Bacardi v. Registrar of Patents (1971) (II) 25 P.D. 87 (confiscatory decrees); Hawardy v. Klinsky (1970) (II) 24 P.D. 565 (breach of laws of foreign state).

18 See, e.g. Lauterpacht, Judge in Case Concerning the Application of the Convention of 1902 Governing the Guardianship of Infants (1958) I.C.J. Reports of Judgments, etc. 55, 90Google Scholar: “The notion of ordre public is generally used in two meanings: It is either applied as referring to specific spheres of the law such as territorial laws, criminal laws, police laws… secondly, it is resorted to as embracing … fundamental national conceptions of law, decency and morality”. For presentation of differing views as to the relation between local law and “ordre public” see Maury, J., “L'Ordre Public en Droit International Privé Français et Allemand” (1954) 43 Revue Critique de Droit International Privé 7.Google Scholar

19 Under Article 14 of the Hague Convention on Foreign Judgments (see supra n. 11), “the procedure for the recognition or enforcement of foreign judgments is governed by the law of the state addressed …” And see Dicey and Morris, op. cit, supra n. 4 at p. 1101 “…the method of enforcing a judgment is a matter of procedure” (referring primarily to an original judgment of the forum, but the same principle should apply to the enforcement of a foreign judgment).

20 Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933, sec. 1 (2) (b).

21 This provision did not appear in the original Draft but was introduced between the first and second readings in the Knesset.

22 In England, lack of international jurisdiction is also regarded as a defence: Dicey and Morris, op. cit. supra n. 4 at p. 1025.

23 This is not the rule in English law: ibid., at p. 1024.

24 See e.g. Gottlieb v. Gottlieb (1951) 5 P.D. 57, 69 referring obiter to submission to the jurisdiction and to Harris v. Taylor [1915] 2 K.B. 580; Hamossad L'Aliyah v. Kawan (1954) 8 P.D. 72, adopting the rule of Emanuel v. Symon [1908] 1 K.B. 302 that possession of property within the territory of a State does not confer jurisdiction on that state. See also Yadgrof v. Yadgrof (1967) (II) 21 P.D. 650, where it was decided that failure of the defendant to apply to have an order for service against him out of the jurisdiction set aside constituted submission which was sufficient to ground international jurisdiction. See criticism of this decision by Shereshewsky, S., “Submission to Jurisdiction— A New Fiction?” (1969) 1 Mishpatim 432.Google Scholar

25 See rule 185 in Dicey and Morris, op. cit., supra n. 4 at p. 1024, which states “(1) A foreign judgment is impeachable if the courts of the foreign country did not … have jurisdiction to give that judgment in the view of English law…”, and comment thereon: “Clause (1) of the present Rule is thus in a sense merely mechanical, in that it merely refers to other rules”.

26 12 L.S.I. 82.