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Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly

RECOGNITION OF FOREIGN JUDGMENTS AND CROSS-BORDER INSOLVENCIES

Adeline Chong*

In the joined appeals of Rubin v Eurofinance and New Cap Reinsurance v Grant, the Supreme Court held that, first, the traditional rules on recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments applied to judgments in insolvency proceedings and, secondly, the act of lodging proof in foreign insolvency proceedings by a creditor meant that he had submitted to the jurisdiction of the supervising court. This article considers these decisions and suggests that the ruling in Rubin is sound, while that in New Cap is unfounded. Further, assuming instead that the law is ripe for reform, this article considers what might be appropriate recognition and enforcement rules for judgments in insolvency proceedings.

A. Introduction

Dicey, Morris, and Collins’ Rule 431 identifies four situations in which a foreign judgment in personam is entitled to recognition and enforcement at common law: where the judgment debtor (i) was present in the foreign country at the time the proceedings were instituted; (ii) was a claimant or counterclaimed in the foreign proceedings; (iii) submitted to the jurisdiction of the foreign court by voluntarily appearing in the proceedings; or (iv) agreed, prior to the commencement of the proceedings, to submit to the jurisdiction of that court in respect of the subject matter of the proceedings. These four alternative criteria give the foreign court international jurisdiction in our eyes. The issue which arose in

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