Reciprocating territories and Section 44A
Section 44A of the Code of Civil Procedure allows a decree from a superior court of a country the Indian government has notified as a reciprocating territory to be executed directly in India, as though it were a decree passed by an Indian district court, without the need to file a fresh suit. Only a limited number of countries have been notified as reciprocating territories, and the list matters a great deal: if the judgment comes from a country that has not been notified, this simplified route is not available, and the judgment holder must instead file an ordinary suit in India, treating the foreign judgment as the basis of the claim.
When a foreign judgment is not conclusive
Section 13 of the Code of Civil Procedure sets out the circumstances in which a foreign judgment is not treated as conclusive between the parties, even where it would otherwise be enforceable. These include where the judgment was not given by a court of competent jurisdiction, was not given on the merits of the case, appears on its face to be founded on an incorrect view of international law or a refusal to recognise Indian law where it should have applied, was obtained in proceedings opposed to natural justice, was obtained by fraud, or sustains a claim founded on a breach of any law in force in India. A defendant resisting enforcement in India needs to bring the case within one of these established exceptions rather than simply arguing the foreign decision was wrong on the facts.
Foreign divorce decrees
Recognition of a foreign matrimonial decree raises its own considerations. In Y. Narasimha Rao v. Y. Venkata Lakshmi (1991) 3 SCC 451, the Supreme Court held that a foreign matrimonial judgment is not conclusive in India unless the jurisdiction assumed by the foreign court, and the ground on which the decree was granted, is also recognised under the law under which the parties were married. This means an ex-parte foreign divorce obtained on a ground or basis of jurisdiction unfamiliar to Indian matrimonial law can face real difficulty being recognised in India, which matters greatly for a person who assumed a foreign decree had settled the matter for good.
Time limits worth knowing early
Enforcement is not open-ended. A decree from a reciprocating territory must be executed within the limitation period that applies to execution of decrees generally, and a suit on a foreign judgment from a non-reciprocating country is subject to the ordinary limitation period for filing such a suit. Both periods run from a fixed point, typically the date of the judgment, so delay in starting the process can itself become the reason enforcement ultimately fails, independent of the merits.
