Nigerian Judgment Satisfies Arizona’s Reciprocity Requirement
July 16, 2025
On July 10, 2025, in Ejeh v. Ali, the Arizona Court of Appeals recognized a Nigerian judgment, finding that Nigeria’s foreign judgments law satisfied Arizona’s reciprocity requirement. Reciprocity requirements are rare in state laws governing foreign judgments—Arizona is one of just five states to have such a requirement. The decision thus affords an opportunity to examine how reciprocity requirements operate, as well as some of the other grounds for nonrecognition of foreign judgments that the Arizona court considered.
Borrowing Money from Your Cousin
The parties to this dispute are cousins. In 2008, Emmanuel Robert Ejeh (who lives in Nigeria) loaned $100,000 to his cousin Anthony Ali (who lives in Arizona). In 2018, Ali repaid about $5,800. In 2021, Ejeh sued Ali for the remainder, plus solicitors’ fees, in Nigerian court. The court authorized service by email, and Ali did not appear to defend the suit. The Nigerian court evaluated the evidence presented by the plaintiff and entered a default judgment for the unpaid loan but not for the solicitors’ fees, the amount of which had not been proven.
Ejeh then petitioned for recognition of the Nigerian judgment in Arizona superior court. Applying Arizona’s version of the 2005 Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act, the court recognized the foreign judgment, making it enforceable against Ali’s property in the United States.
U.S. Law on Foreign Judgments
In the United States, the recognition and enforcement of foreign country judgments is generally governed by state law. Federal courts follow the rules of the state in which they sit. Most states have adopted one of two Uniform Acts addressing foreign judgments. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have adopted the 2005 Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act. An additional nine states rely on its predecessor, the 1962 Uniform Foreign Money-Judgments Recognition Act. The remaining twelve states have no applicable statutes and recognize foreign judgments under state common law.
As a general matter, the Uniform Acts apply to final foreign judgments that grant or deny recovery of a sum of money. The Acts presume that such judgments should be recognized and enforced, unless one of the Acts’ enumerated grounds for nonrecognition applies. These grounds, further described here, are (1) systemic lack of due process; (2) lack of subject-matter jurisdiction; (3) lack of personal jurisdiction; (4) lack of notice; (5) fraud; (6) public policy; (7) conflict with another final judgment; (8) conflict with a dispute resolution clause; (9) serious inconvenience, if jurisdiction is based only on personal service (i.e. tag jurisdiction); (10) lack of integrity in the specific proceeding; and (11) lack of due process in the specific proceeding. (The last two grounds are available only under the 2005 Uniform Act.)
Notably absent from this list of grounds for nonrecognition is lack of reciprocity—that the court rendering the foreign judgment would not recognize a similar U.S. judgment if the situation were reversed. In adopting the Uniform Acts, however, five states have added reciprocity requirements: Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Texas.
Courts in these five states have applied their reciprocity requirements in relatively forgiving ways. None has required proof, for example, that the foreign country has actually recognized judgments from their states in the past. Instead, they have looked at the country’s treatment of U.S. judgments more generally or have asked whether the country would be likely to enforce judgments from their states in the future.
Recognizing a Nigerian Judgment
In Ejeh v. Ali, the judgment debtor argued that the Nigerian judgment did not satisfy Arizona’s reciprocity requirement. He also raised several of the 2005 Uniform Act’s grounds for nonrecognition.
Reciprocity
Arizona’s version of the 2005 Uniform Act states that the act does not apply to judgments “from a foreign country that has not adopted or enacted a reciprocal law related to foreign-country money judgments that is similar to this chapter.” The Arizona Supreme Court held in State of the Netherlands v. MD Helicopters, Inc. (2020) that “reciprocal law” is not limited to statutory law and may include caselaw.
As it turns out, Nigeria has a statute on foreign judgments, the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act, and the Arizona Court of Appeals held that this statute satisfies Arizona’s reciprocity requirement. But here is where things get confusing (at least for me). Part I of Nigeria’s Act does indeed look roughly similar to Arizona’s version of the Uniform Act. But under § 3 of Nigeria’s Act, Part I applies only if the Minister of Justice has, by order, extended it to a particular country because that country affords “substantial reciprocity of treatment” to Nigerian judgments. From the information I can find online, the Minister has never made any orders under the Act, and in Teleglobe America, Inc. v. 21st Century Technologies Ltd (2008) a Nigerian Court of Appeals found “nothing … to show that the Minister of Justice has exercised his powers under § 3 of the Foreign Judgment Act in favour of the United States of America.”
Section 10(a) of Nigeria’s Act goes on to say that “a judgment given before the commencement of an order under section 3 of this Act applying Part I of this Act to the foreign country where the judgment was given may be registered within twelve months from the date of the judgment or such longer period as may be allowed by a superior court in Nigeria.” Although, § 10 does not say what rules a Nigerian court should apply to decide whether to register a foreign judgment, Nigeria courts appear to have looked to § 6’s provisions on setting aside a registered judgment, seeking “to avoid circumstances wherein a registered Judgment will be subsequently set aside on the basis of the provision stated in § 6 of the Act.” Thus, in Teleglobe, the Nigerian Court of Appeals held that a Virginia judgment should be registered in Nigeria, having been filed within § 10(a)’s twelve-month time limit. It seems odd to me that provisions of Nigeria’s Act that are supposed to apply only on a finding of reciprocal treatment by the Minister of Justice may be smuggled in through § 10(a) and applied to countries like the United States for which there has been no such finding. But if that is how Nigeria’s courts apply the Act, U.S. courts should accept their interpretation.
Recall, however, that § 10(a) establishes a twelve-month time limit for registering foreign judgments. A superior court in Nigeria may extend that limit, but this appears to be discretionary. In Ejeh v. Ali, Nigerian judgment was entered in March 2022, but the petition to register the judgment was not filed in Arizona until December 2023, some twenty-one months later. Should this make a difference? On the one hand, Nigeria does have “a reciprocal law related to foreign-country money judgments that is similar to” Arizona’s own law. On the other hand, the Arizona Supreme Court said in MD Helicopters that the reciprocity requirement “provides that an Arizona court will only recognize a foreign-country money judgment if it is assured that the rendering foreign country would recognize an Arizona judgment if circumstances were reversed.” That is not true here—there is no assurance that a Nigerian court would recognize an Arizona judgment filed beyond its twelve-month deadline.
The Arizona Court of Appeals considered none of this, perhaps because Ali, who appears to have represented himself, did not raise these points. John Coyle has argued that reciprocity requirements have costs, noting among other things that “[i]t is not always easy for courts to determine whether a foreign country would enforce a U.S. judgment if the situation were reversed.” Ejeh v. Ali illustrates the point.
Personal Jurisdiction
Under Arizona law (as under the 2005 Uniform Act), a foreign judgment may not be enforced if “[t]he foreign court did not have personal jurisdiction over the defendant.” Ali argued that the Nigerian court lacked personal jurisdiction over him because he was not properly served. The Court of Appeals rejected this contention, finding that the Nigerian court ordered service by email, which was sufficient to establish jurisdiction. (Service by email can be problematic under the Hague Service Convention. But Nigeria is not party to the Convention and, in any event, the United States does not object to email service.)
I do not quarrel with this conclusion except to point out that it may not be appropriate for a U.S. court to consider service under this ground at all. The personal jurisdiction ground for non-recognition is directed at contacts with the forum. Arizona’s law goes on to say (again following the 2005 Uniform Act) that a foreign judgment “may not be refused recognition for lack of personal jurisdiction” if any of the listed bases for personal jurisdiction is present, without mentioning proper service.
The list is not exclusive. But that simply emphasizes the point that if one of these bases—or some other basis for personal jurisdiction recognized in the United States—is present a court “may not” refuse recognition for lack of personal jurisdiction, irrespective of service. Moreover, Arizona’s law (like the Uniform Act) has a separate ground for lack of notice. This ground could be rebutted by a showing of proper service, but it does not require proper service as such. In short, the Uniform Act requires contacts with the rendering forum sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction and notice sufficient to allow the defendant to defend, but it does not require proper service.
Systemic Lack of Due Process
Ali also argued “that the Nigerian judicial system lacks procedures compatible with due process, as evidenced by the fact that the judgment was entered without his presence or participation.” I have argued that the United States should get rid of this ground for nonrecognition entirely, as it is rarely successful and generates unnecessary litigation. But in this case, the Court of Appeals simply noted that Arizona permits default judgments and moved on.
Fraud
Ali contended that the Nigerian judgment was based on fraudulent evidence. But this ground for nonrecognition is limited to “fraud that deprived the losing party of an adequate opportunity to present its case,” of which there was no evidence here.
Inconvenient Forum
Ali asserted “that he has not been to Nigeria since 2009” which the Court of Appeals took to be “an argument that the Nigerian court was a ‘seriously inconvenient forum.’” The court noted that this ground for nonrecognition applies only when personal jurisdiction is based only on tag jurisdiction, which again was not the case here.
Integrity of the Rendering Court
Ali suggested that the Nigerian proceedings “raise substantial doubt about the integrity of the rendering court” because it rendered judgment in his absence, allegedly forged the signature of a judge, and was biased in favor of this cousin who was a former military officer. The Court of Appeals repeated that there is nothing wrong with default judgments and concluded that Ali waived his other arguments by not developing them below.
Conclusion
My sympathies in this case lie entirely with Ejeh, the judgment creditor. When his cousin failed to pay him back, he had to go to court in Nigeria and then seek recognition of the judgment in Arizona. Yes, the Nigerian court heard only Ejeh’s side of the story, but that is because Ali failed to defend, probably figuring that Ejeh could never reach him in Arizona.
Arizona’s adoption of the 2005 Uniform Act made it easier for Ejeh to enforce the Nigerian judgment. But not as easy as it should be. Arizona’s reciprocity requirement presented a potentially large hurdle, which the Court of Appeals avoided by taking Nigeria’s statute at face value and not considering the twelve-month deadline for seeking recognition that a Nigerian court would have applied to an Arizona judgment.
Arizona and her four sisters that still have reciprocity requirements should consider getting rid of them. Florida, Massachusetts, and Ohio might consider doing this in the context of replacing the 1962 Uniform Act, which each of them still follows, with the 2005 Uniform. Maine, which used to have a reciprocity requirement, did just this in 2021. Arizona and Texas have already adopted the 2005 Act. But it is never too late to change.