Say the ratio out loud before you open Reasoning — recalling it unprompted is exactly what the exam pays for.
Why it matters
It is the worked instance of the penal exclusion. Huntington v. Attrill says the forum decides whether a foreign law is penal; this is a case in which the forum decided that it was, and refused effect accordingly. It is an honestly short chapter.
Facts
This course cites the case as one in which the foreign law was held penal and does not set out its facts.
Held
The foreign law relied on was held to be penal, and was therefore not enforced.
Reasoning
Step one — apply the settled rule. Foreign penal laws are not enforced, and the characterisation is made by the forum, not by the enacting State.
Step two — look at what the law does, not what it is called. A measure directed at a particular person and operating to deprive him of property by the authority of the State, rather than to resolve a dispute between private parties, bears the marks of a penal law.
Step three — connect it to the neighbouring doctrine. Where a foreign State takes property within its own territory, the forum will normally recognise the legislation and give it effect even if the property is later brought here; but a foreign expropriatory law cannot affect property already situated here, and where the owners are aliens and no adequate compensation is paid, the recognising principle does not apply — The Rose Mary.
Exam use
It opens: any question on the exclusion of foreign law, as the illustration under the penal head.
Present the group as a structure, not a list. The frame: it is the forum's own law to which effect is given, and private international law is a branch of municipal law whose general policy cannot be ignored — Dynamit Actien Gesellschaft v. Rio Tinto Zinc. The three classes: revenue (Government of India v. Taylor), penal (Huntington v. Attrill for the rule, this case for an application), and fundamental policy, deliberately narrow. Then the boundary: exclusion is not non-recognition, and a contract to defraud a foreign revenue will still not be enforced.
Pair it with the judgments side of the module. The same policy appears there as a defence to recognition — a judgment given in penal or revenue proceedings is not enforced, and the Indian form is s. 13(f) together with the exclusion of fines, penalties and taxes from the definition of a decree in s. 44A.
It does not decide a general test of what is penal; the course gives it as an instance, and an answer should present it as one.