Washington Supreme Court Requires In-State Property for Recognition of Foreign Judgments

 

“VT-MXX-Boeing 737 MAX 8-SpiceJet-MSN 60184-VGHS”

by Md Shaifuzzaman Ayon is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

To recognize and enforce a judgment rendered in another jurisdiction, a U.S. court need not have in personam jurisdiction over the judgment debtor. The U.S. Supreme Court observed in Shaffer v. Heitner (1977):

Once it has been determined by a court of competent jurisdiction that the defendant is a debtor of the plaintiff, there would seem to be no unfairness in allowing an action to realize on that debt in a State where the defendant has property, whether or not that State would have jurisdiction to determine the existence of the debt as an original matter.

Courts in the United States have divided, however, over whether due process requires the presence of property within the state when a court lacks in personam jurisdiction.

On April 9, 2026, in Alterna Aircraft V B Ltd. v. SpiceJet Ltd., the Supreme Court of Washington held that, “in the absence of general or specific jurisdiction, a debtor must have property in Washington before a foreign country judgment may be recognized.” The opinion follows the recent trend of decisions addressing this question.

Construing Shaffer

In Lenchyshyn v. Pelko Electric, Inc. (2001), New York’s Appellate Division concluded “that no jurisdictional basis for proceeding against the judgment debtor need be shown before a foreign judgment will be recognized or enforced in a given state,” relying on a number of decisions interpreting Shaffer’s dictum with respect to sister-state judgments. The Texas Court of Appeals reached the same conclusion in Haaksman v. Diamond Offshore (Bermuda), Ltd. (2008).

Lenchyshyn explained that requiring in personam or in rem jurisdiction “would unduly protect a judgment debtor and enable him easily to escape his just obligations under a foreign country money judgment” by moving assets out of the state, “no difficult trick in this day of telecommuting and banking and investing by telephone or wire or over the Internet.” “[E]ven if defendants do not presently have assets in New York,” the Appellate Division explained, “plaintiffs nevertheless should be granted recognition of the foreign country money judgment … and thereby should have the opportunity to pursue all such enforcement steps in futuro, whenever it might appear that defendants are maintaining assets in New York.”

But more recent decision have leaned the other way. In AlbaniaBEG Ambient Sh.p.k. v. Enel S.p.A. (2018), New York’s Appellate Division limited Lenchyshyn to cases where no grounds for nonrecognition are raised by the judgment debtor and the court is merely performing a “ministerial function.” When, by contrast, the judgment debtor argues that a foreign-country judgment is not entitled to recognition, “the court’s function ceases to be merely ministerial.” “To require a defendant to litigate such substantive issues in a forum where it maintains no property, and where it has no contacts that would otherwise subject it to personal jurisdiction,” the court continued, “would ‘offend [the] traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice’” (quoting International Shoe Co. v. Washington (1945)).

The Texas Court of Appeals has also changed its position, holding in Dynaresource de Mexico S.A. de C.V. v. Goldgroup Resources Inc. (2023) that Haaksman has been superseded by Texas’s subsequent enactment of the 2005 Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act (an updated version of the 1962 Act in place when Haaksman was decided). “[I]t is antithetical to our system of justice,” the court stated, “to be able to file a suit for recognition of a judgment when the purported judgment debtor has no ties to the state in which recognition is sought, either through assets to attach or seize by enforcement or personal jurisdiction over the judgment debtor.”

At least some of the shift towards requiring in-state property is attributable to an 2016 article by TLB contributors Linda Silberman and Aaron Simowitz, Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments and Awards: What Hath Daimler Wrought? There, they argued that enforcing a foreign-country judgment requires filing a court action and that filing an action requires personal jurisdiction. “The Due Process Clause serves here, as it does in plenary actions,” they wrote, “to protect a defendant from the burdens of litigating in a forum where it has a limited connection” (pp. 353-54). AlbaniaBEG relied heavily on their article.

Washington Weighs In

In Alterna Aircraft, the Supreme Court of Washington became the first court of last resort to address this question. Aided by an amicus brief from Professors Silberman and Simowitz, the court held that Washington courts may not recognize a foreign-country judgment unless the judgment debtor is subject to personal jurisdiction in the state or has property there.

SpiceJet, an Indian low-cost airline, leased two Boeing 737 airplanes from Alterna Aircraft, an Irish company. After SpiceJet fell behind on its lease payments, Alterna brought suit in English courts, as provided in the lease agreements. SpiceJet made only a limited appearance, and the English court entered judgment for Alterna in the amount of $12 million. Alterna then filed a petition for recognition of the English judgment in Washington state court. SpiceJet maintained that it had no property in Washington and that the court lacked personal jurisdiction, but the trial court denied its motion to dismiss and recognized the foreign judgment. The Washington Court of Appeals affirmed.

Washington is among the 29 U.S. states that have adopted the 2005 Uniform Act, which requires recognition of foreign country judgments unless a ground for nonrecognition applies. But, Justice Steven González observed in his opinion for the majority, “nothing in the act requires a court to entertain a recognition action when it does not have the jurisdiction to do so.”

Justice González noted that Shaffer’s dictum has been read in different ways. He rejected Alterna’s analogy to the recognition of sister-state judgments, which is a ministerial act:

Unlike a clerk accepting a properly authenticated judgment of a court of this nation, a court considering a petition for recognition of a foreign country money judgment is doing more than performing a purely ministerial function. The act articulates both discretionary and mandatory reasons to deny recognition, and, once the court has entertained the recognition action, the judge may need to exercise judgment to determine whether the specific judgment qualifies for recognition.

In the end, Justice González agreed with the more recent Texas and New York decisions: “We hold that, in the absence of general or specific jurisdiction, a debtor must have property in Washington before a foreign country judgment may be recognized under [Washington’s version of the 2005 Uniform Act].”

The Washington Supreme Court was, however, closely divided. Former Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote a dissent joined by three others. (Madsen and former Associate Justice Mary Yu, were appointed as justices pro tempore to replace two current members of the court who did not participate.) Justice Madsen argued that Washington’s adoption of the Uniform Act addresses personal jurisdiction by providing that a court “shall” recognize a foreign country judgment unless a ground for nonrecognition applies. “The Uniform Act provides both mandatory and discretionary grounds for nonrecognition,” the dissent noted. “What the Uniform Act does not do is provide courts with discretion to not recognize a foreign judgment based on lack of jurisdiction in its own court.”

Of course, Justice Madsen’s argument presumes that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment permits a state to authorize the recognition of foreign country judgments despite the absence of any nexus to the state. Justice González’s majority opinion did not press the dissent on this point. Indeed, the majority opinion is itself unclear about whether its decision rests on constitutional or statutory grounds. There are passages that could be read each way.

Conclusion

As an academic who also sometimes writes amicus briefs, it is heartening to see the influence that Professor Silberman and Professor Simowitz appear to be having on this issue in the state courts. Their 2016 article seems to have turned the tide in New York. And I suspect that their amicus brief—which is very well done—may have tipped the scales in the Washington Supreme Court.