AO Alfa Bank v. Yakovlev, No. D071872 (D4d1 Apr. 3, 2018)
This is an action by a Russian Bank under the Uniform Foreign Country Money Judgments Recognition Act, Code Civ. Proc. §§ 1713–25. The Bank wants to collect on a $30 million default judgment against a Russian national who since sought political asylum in the US, settled in San Diego, and took work as an Uber driver.
The contract being sued on listed a business address in Moscow as the appropriate place for Debtor to receive notice. That address was the same as Debtor’s official address registered under Russian law. Records from the Russian court showed that Debtor was twice sent a summons and other documents, by registered mail, to the registered/notice address. The Court also sent Debtor two telegrams to his residence, although they were apparently not received.
Debtor never appeared in the Russian court. A default was ultimately taken and judgment entered against Debtor. After learning that Debtor had emigrated to the U.S., the Bank sought to domesticate the judgement in San Diego Superior Court.
Debtor contests the recognition of the judgment because that the Russian court lacked personal jurisdiction, he wasn’t properly served, and the proceeding didn’t comply with due process. Each of these is grounds for a refusal of recognition under § 1716. The factual crux of each point was that Debtor never received actual notice of the suit. The trial court found that actual notice was not proven, and agreed it was a necessary condition of recognition. So it declined to enforce the judgment. The Bank appeals.
There’s a threshold question about whether the docs that evidence the Russian court’s service efforts are hearsay. The Court of Appeal says that they come under the public records exception in Evidence Code § 1280(a). Through various definitions in the Code, § 1280(a) applies equally to the acts of foreign public officials. See Evid. Code §§ 195, 200. Further, under presumptions codified in the Evidence Code, the documents were presumed: (1) to be accurately dated, Evid. Code § 640, and (2) to have been sent consistently with the Russian court’s obligation to do so, Evid. Code § 664. With the benefit of the presumptions, the evidentiary foundation for the public records exception was met.
The Court notes that Debtor could have challenged the reliability of Russian court procedures or documents, which could make them inadmissible the exception. It offers as an an example Lakah v. UBS AG, 996 F. Supp. 2d 25 (S.D.N.Y. 2014), which denied public records treatment to Egyptian case files after the defendant presented circumstantial evidence that the Egyptian courts had been engaged as an instrumentality to oppress political opposition. Although the Court suggests it would set a low bar for such a challenge, Debtor—a political asylee seeking to avoid enforcement of a default judgment obtained in a Moscow court by an oligarch-owned bank with heavy-duty connections to Putin—didn’t submit any evidence of concerns with the Russian courts, so the docs come in.
With the docs in evidence, the Court concludes that Debtor’s notice arguments are not well-taken. As it explains, procedurally adequate service and due process require only an effort reasonably calculated to apprise a party that an action has been filed and to permit a response. Notwithstanding Debtor’s assertion that he did not, in fact, receive actual notice, the conditions of recognition were satisfied by the procedures used by the Russian court.
In particular, because Debtor was served at the notice address in the contract, which was Debtor’s official registered address under Russian law, and in the absence of any attack on the integrity of the Russian court’s procedures, any failure of actual notice was likely caused by Debtor’s failure to keep his address up to date. That in mind, the registered service effected on that address was adequate from both a service and a due process perspective.
Reversed.
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