Muka v. Horizon Financial Corp.

• Decision Date: 02 February 2000
• Docket Number: No. 4D98-3098.,4D98-3098.
• Parties: Betty O. MUKA, Assignee, Appellant, v. HORIZON FINANCIAL CORPORATION, and Michael D. Hackney, Appellees.
• Court: Florida District Court of Appeals

766 So.2d 239

Betty O. MUKA, Assignee, Appellant, v. HORIZON FINANCIAL CORPORATION, and Michael D. Hackney, Appellees.

No. 4D98-3098.

District Court of Appeal of Florida, Fourth District.

February 2, 2000.

Betty O. Muka, Ithaca, New York, pro se.

Gregory S. Grossman and Eduardo W. Gonzalez of Steel Hector & Davis, LLP, Miami, for appellee Michael D. Hackney.

FARMER, J.

The essential question in this appeal is unique to this state. The issue is whether a judgment creditor may register a foreign judgment in Florida that is no longer effective where rendered and has not been revived. We conclude that the judgment may not be registered here.

In 1985 a federal district court sitting in Texas rendered a money judgment in favor of Herbert Oakes and against Horizon Financial Corporation. Oakes has apparently since assigned the judgment to appellant. Under Texas law, a judgment becomes dormant—that is to say, it will no longer be enforced by the rendering court—after the lapse of ten years, but it may be revived if an action for revival is brought within two years from the date it became dormant. More than two years after this judgment became dormant, the assignee of the judgment brought a revival action in the rendering court, arguing that the absence of the debtor from the rendering state extended the revival period. That court ruled that revival of the judgment was barred by the Texas statute of limitations. Its decision is under appeal to the federal appellate court. Meanwhile the assignee seeks to register the judgment in Florida under the Florida Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (FEFJA).¹ The trial judge barred registration because the judgment was no longer enforceable in the rendering state.

FEFJA provides a statutory means of enforcing foreign judgments, as an alternative to the option of bringing a new, formal action on the judgment in Florida. Judgment creditors seek registration of judgments outside the state of rendition in order to reach property of the judgment debtor to satisfy their judgments in the forum of registration. The statutory scheme of registration in Florida is thus a remedy implementing the requirement of full faith and credit to the judgments of the United States and the States of the Union, the purpose of which is to allow enforcement of money judgments throughout the Union.

The requirement of full faith and credit arises under the United States Constitution and legislation passed by Congress. The Full Faith and Credit Clause and its implementing statute² require every state to give the same effect to judicial proceedings as the rendering state gives them. Durfee v. Duke, 375 U.S. 106, 84 S.Ct. 242, 11 L.Ed.2d 186 (1963); Riley v. New York Trust Co., 315 U.S. 343, 62 S.Ct. 608, 86 L.Ed. 885 (1942). These provisions provide that the judgments of the courts of each state be given the same, i.e., neither more nor less, effect in the enforcing states than they are given in the state that renders them. Aldrich v. Aldrich, 378 U.S. 540, 542, 84 S.Ct. 1687, 12 L.Ed.2d 1020 (1964); Johnson v. Muelberger, 340 U.S. 581, 71 S.Ct. 474, 95 L.Ed. 552 (1951); Coe v. Coe, 334 U.S. 378, 68 S.Ct. 1094, 92 L.Ed. 1451 (1948); New York ex rel. Halvey v. Halvey, 330 U.S. 610, 67 S.Ct. 903, 91 L.Ed. 1133 (1947). The issue raised by this case is whether FEFJA, and thus inferentially the requirement of full faith and credit, requires registration of a foreign judgment that no longer has any effect in the state that originally produced the judgment. We think not.

In Le Credit Lyonnais, S.A. v. Nadd, 741 So.2d 1165 (Fla. 5th DCA 1999), the court confronted a similar issue under a different statute. Credit Lyonnais involved the Florida Uniform Out-of-Country Money-Judgment Recognition Act (FUOMRA),³ rather than FEFJA. FUOMRA applies to judgments rendered in foreign countries outside of the United States and thus lacks the constitutional compulsion of full faith and credit. It is however founded on one or more treaties to which the United States is bound, requiring the recognition of alien judgments as a necessary ingredient of international relations. It is thus critical that the French judgment in Credit Lyonnais was still enforceable in the jurisdiction that rendered it, unlike the federal judgment we confront in this case. Also, as the Credit Lyonnais court itself noted, FUOMRA lacks a counterpart to FEFJA section 55.502(4) which provides that:

"Nothing contained in this act shall be construed to alter, modify, or extend the limitation period applicable for the enforcement of foreign judgments."

The judgment debtor in this case argues that registration in Florida is barred under section 95.11(2)(a) which requires that an action "on a judgment or decree of ... any court of ... any other state" be brought within 5 years. Section 95.11(2)(a) is, of course, associated with section 95.10, which bars causes of action arising in another state if they are time-barred in the state in which they arose.

We note that in FEFJA the legislature has sought to preserve the distinction between, as here, merely registering a foreign judgment and, alternatively, bringing a formal civil action in this state on the foreign judgment. The distinction is important because, although these separate procedures both relate to enforcement of foreign judgments, they involve different consequences. Registration of a judgment is obviously derivative of the original judgment itself. That is to say, the effect of registering the judgment...