Johnston v. Compagnie Générale Transatlantique

• Decision Date: 04 May 1926
• Citation: 152 N.E. 121,242 N.Y. 381
• Parties: JOHNSTON v. COMPAGNIE GÉNÉRALE TRANSATLANTIQUE.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

242 N.Y. 381

152 N.E. 121

JOHNSTON

v.COMPAGNIE GÉNÉRALE TRANSATLANTIQUE. ^*

Court of Appeals of New York.

May 4, 1926.

Action by Robert D. Johnston, as sole surviving partner of Riske & Johnston, against the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. Judgment was granted for plaintiff on verdict directed by the court (123 Misc. Rep. 806, 206 N. Y. S. 413), and affirmed by the Appellate Division (214 App. Div. 775, 210 N. Y. S. 868), and defendant appeals by permission.

Reversed, and complaint dismissed.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department.

Joseph P. Nolan, Edward J. Garity, and Arthur K. Kuhn, all of New York City, for appellant.

Solomon Boneparth, Moses Feltenstein, Abraham Rosenstein, and Harry A. Dubinsky, all of New York City, for respondent.

POUND, J.

The controversy arises over an alleged wrongful delivery of goods by the defendant, a steamship carrier, which is a foreign corporation organized under the laws of the republic of France. Plaintiff is the assignee of triplicate bills of lading issued in New York, under which one Frank E. Webb shipped the goods from New York to Havre. Defendant delivered the goods to other parties upon presentation of a nonnegotiable copy of the bill of lading which Webb retained as an office copy not used for presentation to secure the delivery of the goods.

Defendant set up as a defense an adjudication of the Tribunal of Commerce at Paris in favor of defendant upon the same cause of action, in an action brought by plaintiff thereon, and established on the trial that the French judgment was the final judgment on the merits of a court of competent jurisdiction. No attempt was made to impeach it for fraud. The courts below refused to give effect to the French judgment on the authority of Hilton v. Guyot, 159 U. S. 113, 16 S. Ct. 139, 40 L. Ed. 95, decided in 1895, for the reason that by the law of France no foreign judgment can be rendered executory in France without a review of the judgment au fond, that is, of the whole merits of the cause of action on which the judgment rests; that for want of reciprocity the courts of this state are not bound by the judgment, but will, in their discretion, examine the rights of the parties as fully and absolutely as if the matter had never been submitted to the French court; and that on the merits the French judgment was contrary to the principles of our law and should be disregarded.

The New York rule was stated in Dunstan v. Higgins, 138 N. Y. 70, 33 N. E. 729, 20 L. R. A. 668, 34 Am. St. Rep. 431, decided in 1893, as follows:

‘It is the settled law of this state that a foreign judgment is conclusive upon the merits. its. It can be impeached only by proof that the court in which it was rendered had not jurisdiction of the subject matter of the action or of the person of the defendant, or that it was procured by means of fraud. * * * The judgments of the courts of a sister state are entitled to full faith and credit in the courts of the other states under the Constitution of the United States, but effect is given to the judgments of the courts of foreign countries by the comity of nations which is part of our municipal law. The refusal of the foreign court to allow a commission to examine witnesses here does not affect the conclusive character of the judgment. Such applications are generally within the discretion of the court to which they are addressed and then a refusal to grant them does not constitute even a legal error subject to review. But even if it appeared in this case, as it does not, that some legal right of the defendant was denied in refusing the application that would not affect the validity or conclusive nature of the judgment, so long as it stood unreversed and not set aside. Legal errors committed upon the trial or during the progress of the cause may be corrected by appeal or motion to the proper court, but they furnish no defense to an action upon the judgment itself. Where a party is sued in a foreign country, upon a contract made there, he is subject to the procedure of the court in which the action is pending, and must resort to it for the purpose of his defense, if he has any, and any error committed must be reviewed or corrected in the usual way. So long as he has the benefit of such rules and regulations as have been adopted or are in use for the ordinary administration of justice among the citizens or subjects of the country he cannot complain, and justice is not denied to him. The presumption is that the rights and liability of the defendant have been determined according to the law and procedure of the country where the judgment was rendered.’

This is the modern English doctrine and the doctrine of some, at least, of our state courts (Lazier v. Westcott, 26 N. Y. 146, 82 Am. Dec. 404;Konitzky v. Meyer, 49 N. Y. 571, 576;MacDonald v. Grand Trunk Ry. Co., 71 N. H. 448, 52 A. 982,59 L. R. A. 448, 93 Am. St. Rep. 550; Nouvion v. Freeman, 15 App. Cas. 1, 9; Goddard v. Gray, L. R. 6 Q. B. 139-148), and has the approval of recent text-book writers (3 Freeman on Judgments, 3069).

In Hilton v. Guyot the action was brought on a foreign judgment, rendered by the same court in which the judgment herein was rendered. The opinion of Judge Gray, after an exhaustive review of the subject, while fully recognizing the general rule as stated, lays down the collateral and qualifying rule that on principles of comity judgments rendered in France, by whose laws judgments of the United States courts are reviewable on their merits, are not conclusive when sued upon in the United States, and are only prima facie evidence of the justice of plaintiff's claim. Fuller, C. J., wrote a dissenting opinion in which Harlan, Brewer, and Jackson, JJ., concurred. He says (page 233 ):

‘In any aspect, it is difficult to see why rights acquired under foreign judgments do not belong to the category of private rights acquired under foreign laws. Now the rule is universal in this country that private rights acquired under the laws of foreign states will be respected and enforced in our courts unless contrary to the policy or prejudicial to the interests of the state where this is sought to be done; and although the source of this rule may have been the comity characterizing the intercourse between nations, it prevails today by its own strength, and the right to the application of the law to which the particular transaction is subject is a jurisdical right.’

No case has previously arisen in this state which necessarily involved the...