5 ms·

> forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves. At the risk of not being able to enjoy castles and blood pudding on vacation

> forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves. At the risk of not being able to enjoy castles and blood pudding on vacation, couldn't they just ignore the suit?

nullc 2y ago
Unfortunately most developed nations are generally willing to domesticate the foreign judgements of other developed nations. There are exceptions, e.g. the SPEECH ACT makes many UK defamation claims largely unenforceable in the US... but even if you think you'd be able to block enforcement in your own jurisdiction, if you are wrong you likely forfeit being able defend the claim on its merits. You also have to deal with any organizations you do business with who are exposed to the UK being ordered to take adverse actions like freeze or seize your accounts. Because an outlaw in the UK is no joke either, you'd potentially have to spend the rest of your life at risk of being arrested if by happenstance you found yourself in that jurisdiction (e.g. due to a rerouted aircraft), face discrimination from future employers or potential business contacts because of the specter of a judgement hanging over you. That said, had we not been able to secure funding for our defense we might well have defaulted anyways: if the defense would have bankrupted us, we'd be better off saving our funds and hoping to avoid enforcement of the judgement bankrupting us. But fortunately, Jack Dorsey and the chaincode founders stepped up.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > Unfortunately most developed nations are generally willing to domesticate the foreign judgements of other developed nations. There are exceptions, e.g. the SPEECH ACT makes many UK defamation claims largely unenforceable in the US... but even if you think you'd be able to block enforcement in your own jurisdiction, if you are wrong you likely forfeit being able defend the claim on its merits. I don't think this is true at all for the US, right? Not just because of the first amendment, but in general I don't think UK judgements are enforceable at all in the US. I wouldn't even think it would be enforceable in commonwealth countries. Do you have any examples of UK judgements such as those we are discussing being enforced in any of the five eyes countries aside from the UK?
  - nullc 2y ago
    There are mmmmmany such examples. The term, as I mentioned, is domesticating the judgement. In California the primary governing law is https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2009/ccp/1713-1724.html https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2009/ccp/1713-1724.h... (though there is similar/equivalent statute in most? all? other states) -- there are other laws for non-monetary damages though non-US non-monetary relief may be hard to domesticate because we generally don't do specific performance but many other jurisdictions do. Wikipedia on the subject is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_of_foreign_judgments#Enforcement_of_foreign_judgments_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_of_foreign_judgmen... If you look at the CA law as an example you can see there are a number of reasons to fight the domestication of a judgement, some quite powerful. But they don't replace the value in fighting a case on its merits that ought to be a slam dunk on its merits. In our case specifically not all of the defendants were in the US either, some were in locations where enforcement may be even harder to prevent.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      Interesting, thanks very much for the links and info. It seems NY is notably a state that does not have an equivilant to that CA legilslation, I'm based in NY so I wonder if that's why I was less aware of this. I'm honestly surprised at this because there could be so many complications, and laws in a foreign country could be so different as to be incompatible with US laws. Although the wiki does say it's up to a judge if the foreign judgement will be enforced locally or not. The legislation is one thing, do you know how often a US judge does tend to enforce a foreign judgement? What percentage of attempts to do so are successful? This exception listed on the wiki page "The judgment is repugnant to the public policy of the state where enforcement is sought" I imagine would invalidate a lot of attempts. Also, another listed exception "In the case of jurisdiction based only on personal service, the foreign court was an inconvenient forum for the trial" - wouldn't that be sufficient to stop US residents from having to spend a lot of money to defend themselves in a country they might never go to? If you're in the UK and I'm in the US and I sue you, it doesn't seem reasonable to expect you to have to travel here or to spend money on local representation to defend yourself. I would think the way it would work is that I would et a summary judgement here, and then it would be on me to travel to the UK to try and get it enforced. That seems fairer to me, although I guess it doesn't work like that.

> forced dozens of people not living in UK to pay big money to defend themselves. At the risk of not being able to enjoy castles and blood pudding on vacation, couldn't they just ignore the suit?

nullc 2y ago

Unfortunately most developed nations are generally willing to domesticate the foreign judgements of other developed nations. There are exceptions, e.g. the SPEECH ACT makes many UK defamation claims largely unenforceable in the US... but even if you think you'd be able to block enforcement in your own jurisdiction, if you are wrong you likely forfeit being able defend the claim on its merits. You also have to deal with any organizations you do business with who are exposed to the UK being ordered to take adverse actions like freeze or seize your accounts. Because an outlaw in the UK is no joke either, you'd potentially have to spend the rest of your life at risk of being arrested if by happenstance you found yourself in that jurisdiction (e.g. due to a rerouted aircraft), face discrimination from future employers or potential business contacts because of the specter of a judgement hanging over you. That said, had we not been able to secure funding for our defense we might well have defaulted anyways: if the defense would have bankrupted us, we'd be better off saving our funds and hoping to avoid enforcement of the judgement bankrupting us. But fortunately, Jack Dorsey and the chaincode founders stepped up.

ruthmarx 2y ago
> Unfortunately most developed nations are generally willing to domesticate the foreign judgements of other developed nations. There are exceptions, e.g. the SPEECH ACT makes many UK defamation claims largely unenforceable in the US... but even if you think you'd be able to block enforcement in your own jurisdiction, if you are wrong you likely forfeit being able defend the claim on its merits. I don't think this is true at all for the US, right? Not just because of the first amendment, but in general I don't think UK judgements are enforceable at all in the US. I wouldn't even think it would be enforceable in commonwealth countries. Do you have any examples of UK judgements such as those we are discussing being enforced in any of the five eyes countries aside from the UK?
- nullc 2y ago
  There are mmmmmany such examples. The term, as I mentioned, is domesticating the judgement. In California the primary governing law is https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2009/ccp/1713-1724.html https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2009/ccp/1713-1724.h... (though there is similar/equivalent statute in most? all? other states) -- there are other laws for non-monetary damages though non-US non-monetary relief may be hard to domesticate because we generally don't do specific performance but many other jurisdictions do. Wikipedia on the subject is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_of_foreign_judgments#Enforcement_of_foreign_judgments_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcement_of_foreign_judgmen... If you look at the CA law as an example you can see there are a number of reasons to fight the domestication of a judgement, some quite powerful. But they don't replace the value in fighting a case on its merits that ought to be a slam dunk on its merits. In our case specifically not all of the defendants were in the US either, some were in locations where enforcement may be even harder to prevent.
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    Interesting, thanks very much for the links and info. It seems NY is notably a state that does not have an equivilant to that CA legilslation, I'm based in NY so I wonder if that's why I was less aware of this. I'm honestly surprised at this because there could be so many complications, and laws in a foreign country could be so different as to be incompatible with US laws. Although the wiki does say it's up to a judge if the foreign judgement will be enforced locally or not. The legislation is one thing, do you know how often a US judge does tend to enforce a foreign judgement? What percentage of attempts to do so are successful? This exception listed on the wiki page "The judgment is repugnant to the public policy of the state where enforcement is sought" I imagine would invalidate a lot of attempts. Also, another listed exception "In the case of jurisdiction based only on personal service, the foreign court was an inconvenient forum for the trial" - wouldn't that be sufficient to stop US residents from having to spend a lot of money to defend themselves in a country they might never go to? If you're in the UK and I'm in the US and I sue you, it doesn't seem reasonable to expect you to have to travel here or to spend money on local representation to defend yourself. I would think the way it would work is that I would et a summary judgement here, and then it would be on me to travel to the UK to try and get it enforced. That seems fairer to me, although I guess it doesn't work like that.