Enforcing My Judgment In China

The judgment is of course good in the Untied States and you should first use the judgment against the defendant in this country. That almost goes without saying...

The problem with China is they will most likely not recognize your judgment against a Chinese company. You can, of course, hire local counsel and ask them to do their best, but you will probibly find there is little they can do. At this point, you may want to check and see if the company had an insurer in the west that would honor the American judgment.

Enforcement here will be difficult.

Your best bet is to find ways of enforcing it against them in the US. If you are aware of asset they may have, including accounts receivable, you can get a turn over order or assignment order from a US court. For example if you know that they supply someone else in the US you can get an assignment order to have payments made to you.

One additional trick is to seek a debtor exam of the business' owner or CEO. When he doesn't show you should be able to get an arrest warrant. Serve the arrest warrant on customs and immigration. They will put the name in their system and cause the person grief if they try to enter the US.

This is actually a very complicated question. First off, your judgment might not even be valid in the United States, particularly if it is a default judgment. There is a very good chance you did not serve the Chinese defendant properly pursuant to international law. More particularly, did you comply with the Hague Convention on Service of Process?

China does not enforce US court judgments. Ever. So you have no chance of getting your judgment enforced in China.

I assume you are asking about enforcing your judgment in China because the defendant does not have assets in the United States. If it does have assets here, you should, of course, seek to seize those. One of the things we often do with US judgments against companies based in countries that do not enforce US judgments is to take those judgments to countries that do enforce US judgments and in which the defendant company does have assets. Canada, England, and Korea oftentimes can be very good for this. We have many times seized assets of Russian and Chinese companies in Korea simply because those companies often have assets in Korea and Korea can be very favorable for asset seizures.

One thing you absolutely should not ignore is suing this defendant again in China. China litigation moves very quickly (we have gone from filing to final resolution in three months) and usually costs only a fraction of the costs of litigation here in the United States. So "starting over" in a Chinese court may actually be your best option here.

In the future, consider putting an arbitration provision into your contract. Nearly all countries (including China) are signators to the NY Convention on enforcement of arbitration awards. So had your award come from a US arbitration panel, you probably would be able to take it to China and get it enforced there.

For more information, check out this post on our China Law Blog, entitled, "Enforcing Foreign Judgments in China -- Let's Sue Twice"