Facilitating Money Judgment Enforcement Between Canada and the United States

Abstract

The United States has attempted for years to create a more efficient enforcement regime for foreign-country judgments, both by treaty and statute. Long negotiations succeeded in July 2019, when the Hague Conference on Private International Law (with U.S. participants, including the Uniform Law Commission) promulgated the new Hague Judgments Convention which harmonizes judgment recognition standards but leaves the domestication process to the enforcing jurisdiction. In August 2019, the Uniform Law Commission took a significant step to fill that gap, though limited to Canadian judgments. The Uniform Registration of Canadian Money Judgments Act provides a registration process similar to that for sister-state judgments in the United States. The new Act aligns with Canada’s Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act, retaining due process safeguards while facilitating acceptance of appropriate judgments. In most cases, this will avoid the need for further litigation and lead to more efficient enforcement in adopting jurisdictions. This Article outlines the new Act and then tackles difficult questions that remain subject to local law.

Keywords: transnational litigation, conflict of laws, private international law, judgment enforcement, foreign judgments, Canadian judgments, uniform law, Uniform Law Commission, Uniform Law Commission of Canada, due process, jurisdiction, notice