Home Port Rentals Inc. v Int'l Yachting Group

• Decision Date: 24 May 2001
• Docket Number: 5,0030610
• Parties: HOME PORT RENTALS, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant, v. THE INTERNATIONAL YACHTING GROUP, INC., ETC.; ET AL., Defendants, ROGER MOORE, Defendant-Appellant-Cross-Appellee.IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

HOME PORT RENTALS, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee-Cross-Appellant v THE INTERNATIONAL YACHTING GROUP, INC., ETC.; ET AL., Defendants ROGER MOORE, Defendant-Appellant-Cross-Appellee

No. 00-30610

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

May 21, 2001

Revised May 24, 2001

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana

Before WIENER and STEWART, Circuit Judges, and SMITH, District Judge.¹

WIENER, Circuit Judge.

Appellant-Cross-Appellee Roger Moore and several co-defendants were cast in judgment in March, 1989 (the "1989 judgment") by the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina (the "rendering court"). Although he did not appeal that judgment, two of his co-defendants did, and it was affirmed. Moore now appeals from a judgment rendered a decade later by the district court for the Western District of Louisiana, (1) denying Moore's motion to dismiss two petitions filed simultaneously on March 17, 1999 by Appellee-Cross-Appellant Home Port Rentals, Inc. ("Home Port"), the successful plaintiff in the rendering court which sought to register and enforce the 1989 judgment in the district court for the Western District of Louisiana (the "registration court"), and (2) declaring the 1989 judgment enforceable in the Western District of Louisiana until April 2, 2002, the tenth anniversary of the 1989 judgment's finality on appeal. We affirm the registration court's denial of Moore's motion to dismiss; we modify that court's declaration of enforceability in the Western District of Louisiana by changing the commencement date of the applicable period of limitation (Louisiana's 10-year liberative prescription for enforcement of judgments) from April 2, 1992 (the date that the 1989 judgment was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit) to March 17, 1999, the date it was registered in the registration court; and, as thus modified, we affirm the registration court's declaration of enforceability of the 1989 judgment in the Western District of Louisiana.I. Facts and Proceedings

In 1989, the rendering court held Moore and his co-defendants liable to Home Port for $1,200,000 in compensatory damages and $50,000 in punitive damages for securities fraud, common law fraud, and breach of contract. By an order dated March 16, 1989 and entered March 17, 1989, the rendering court directed its clerk of court to enter judgment for Home Port, which the clerk did on March 20, 1989. This judgment, the 1989 judgment, was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and that court's mandate issued on April 2, 1992. Ultimately, the Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari.

Fast forward to 1999. On March 17 of that year ---- three days shy of the tenth anniversary of the rendering court's entry of the 1989 judgment ---- Home Port simultaneously filed two petitions in the registration court. One seeks registration of a foreign judgment, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1963; the other seeks to enforce that judgment in the Western District of Louisiana.

After Moore filed a motion to dismiss Home Port's two petitions, the registration court referred the case to a magistrate judge for a Report and Recommendation, which was prepared and filed in due course. The magistrate judge recommended that the district court deny Moore's motion to dismiss Home Port's petitions and that the court declare the 1989 judgment enforceable in the Western District of Louisiana until April 2, 2002, 10 years after the issuance of the Fourth Circuit's mandate affirming the appealed 1989 judgment.

Both Moore and Home Port filed written objections to the magistrate judge's recommendations. Moore faulted the report for "failing to apply Louisiana Civil Code art. 3501 in its entirety" and for finding the 1989 judgment enforceable until April 2, 2002, rather than until March 20, 1999 only. Moore contended that the earlier date, 10 years after the 1989 judgment was entered by the rendering court, was the last date on which South Carolina law would permit that judgment to be enforced, regardless of appeal, insisting that South Carolina law should control.²

Home Port's objection criticized only the magistrate judge's legal conclusion that the running of Louisiana's prescriptive period for an action to enforce a registered judgment commenced to run on the day the underlying judgment was affirmed on appeal. Home Port contended that Louisiana's 10-year liberative prescription, which applies to money judgments in federal district courts located in the state, commences to run not from either the date on which the original judgment was entered in the rendering court or the date on which it was affirmed on appeal, but from the date it was registered in the registration court. Specifically, Home Port faulted the report's conclusion that, for purposes of enforcement in the registration court's district, registration under § 1963 is not governed by the same prescriptive period as would be applicable to a plenary judgment of a Louisiana-domiciled federal district court grounded on a foreign judgment ("judgment-on-judgment"); and that § 1963 rather than Louisiana law governs the commencement date for the running of prescription on a judgment of the registration court.

Over those objections, the district court adopted the magistrate judge's Report and Recommendation and ruled accordingly. Moore timely filed a notice of appeal, and Home Port timely filed such a notice for its cross-appeal.

II. Analysis

A. Standard of Review

We review the denial of Moore's dismissal motion de novo.³ As the material facts of this case are undisputed, the issues presented on appeal, including interpretation of state and federal statutes and jurisprudence, and determining which among those are applicable, are issues of law so we also review them de novo.⁴

B. Background

When, on March 17, 1999, the rendering court's money judgment was registered in the registration court, it was still "live" ---- enforceable ---- under applicable South Carolina law.⁵ Likewise, as of its registration on March 17, 1999, the 1989 judgment would still have been enforceable under Louisiana law.⁶ Thus, at a time when it remained enforceable in both the rendering and the registration jurisdictions, (1) the 1989 judgment was registered, and (2) enforcement proceedings were commenced ---- "execution [] issue[d]" in South Carolina terminology ---- in the registration court. Even if measured from the entry date of March 20, 1989 and not the date of finality under Louisiana law or § 1963, neither state's bar date had yet arrived when registration was accomplished.

The 1989 judgment was registered pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1963, which provides for the registration of one federal district court's money judgment in another federal district court as the precursor to enforcement of the original judgment in the latter court.⁷ Prior to the adoption of § 1963, a judgment creditor from one federal district court who wanted to enforce a money judgment in another district had to bring suit in the other federal district court and obtain a new judgment of the second court (a "judgment-on-judgment"). Section 1963 was enacted in large part to "assist[] judgment creditors by making it possible for them to pursue the property of a debtor in satisfaction of a judgment by the ordinary process of levying execution on a judgment in any district where the judgment is registered."⁸ An express reason for Congress's enacting § 1963 was "to spare creditors and debtors alike both the additional costs and harassment of further litigation which would otherwise be required by way of an action on the judgment in a district court other than that where the judgment was originally obtained."⁹ Thus, the question we are asked today is: Strictly for purposes of enforcement within the registration court's district, precisely what are the effects of registration of a money judgment that is still enforceable in the rendering court's district as well as in the district where registered?

C. Case Law

We are aware of no Supreme Court authority on point, and of very little pertinent jurisprudence from federal appellate or district courts.¹⁰ Still, we are not wholly without jurisprudential guidance. The landmark case in this area is Stanford v. Utley, authored by Judge (later Justice) Blackmun for the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.¹¹ The Stanford court was called on to consider the enforceability, in a federal district court in Missouri, of a judgment that had been rendered by a federal district court in Mississippi, then registered the next day, pursuant to § 1963, in a federal district court in Missouri. Obviously, then, the judgment from Mississippi had been registered in Missouri at a time when that judgment was still enforceable in both Mississippi and Missouri. The kicker in Stanford is that, following registration pursuant to § 1963, no proceedings to enforce the registered judgment from Mississippi were instituted in Missouri until more than seven years after that judgment had been rendered in Mississippi and registered in Missouri. In the meantime, Mississippi's seven-year statute of limitations for enforcing judgments in that state ---- and thus in federal courts located there ---- had expired; but Missouri's 10-year limitation period had not.

In concluding that the post-registration expiration of the rendering state's statute of limitations for enforcement of judgments had no effect on enforcement proceedings commenced in the court of registration at a time when the registration state's statute of limitations for enforcement of judgments had not yet expired, the Stanford court recapped its analysis with the following pronouncement:

We have concluded that § 1963 is more than "ministerial" and is more than a mere procedural device for the collection of the foreign judgment. We feel that registration provides, so far as enforcement is concerned, the equivalent of...