Vadala v. Lawes

Abouloff v. Oppenheimer allowed a defendant to reopen a foreign judgment for fraud even where the same fraud had already been alleged and rejected abroad. This case confirms that, and in doing so states the cost to conclusiveness in the sharpest terms the paper gives.

This course cites the case as confirming Abouloff and does not set out its facts.

The whole case may be reopened, even although the English court will have to go into the very facts which were investigated and which were in issue in the foreign court. Conclusiveness is thereby materially and most illogically prejudiced.

Step one — the collision. Two rules meet. A foreign judgment is conclusive on the merits and may not be reopened — Godard v. Gray. Fraud is a recognised defence, because any ground that negatives the obligation may be pleaded.

Step two — the English resolution. The collision was resolved in favour of reopening. In Abouloff Lord Esher held that even if the same fraud had been alleged and the same evidence given in the foreign court, the defendant is not debarred from making the same charge and adducing the same evidence again.

Step three — the consequence, admitted. If the same allegations and the same evidence may be run twice, the foreign judgment is conclusive only until somebody pleads fraud. That is why the course calls the prejudice to conclusiveness illogical as well as material.

It opens: Is fraud a defence to the enforcement of a foreign judgment? — as the second English case, confirming the first.

Then give the Indian departure, which is the examinable contrast. In Sankaran Govindan v. Lakshmi Bharathi, Mathew J. quoted the criticism with approval and refused to follow Abouloff, saying he was not prepared to accept a position permitting a retrial of an issue already determined by a foreign court under the guise of alleging fraud. Trickery must be established not by the same evidence adduced in the foreign court but by new evidence not known to the parties at the time of the former trial. Indian law therefore requires new evidence; English law does not.

And give the qualification where the fraud goes to jurisdiction. In Satya v. Teja Singh fraud as to the jurisdictional facts of the Nevada court was held a vital consideration, drawing from The Duchess of Kingston's Case the distinction between saying the court was mistaken, which is impermissible, and saying it was misled, which is not — the essential distinction being between mistake and trickery. Y. Narasimha Rao confirms that the fraud need not relate only to the merits but may relate to jurisdictional facts.

Learn the four cases as one argument about how far conclusiveness bends: Abouloff and Vadala for England, Sankaran Govindan for India, Satya for the jurisdictional exception.

It does not decide anything about the standard of proof of fraud, or about what evidence will suffice; that is where the Indian rule takes over.