Hyundai Securities v. Lee

INTRODUCTION

We hold that under California’s “Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act” (Code Civ. Proc., §§ 1713-1724 (the Act))1, a trial court may recognize (i) a foreign judgment for indemnification of a criminal penalty paid by plaintiff to an agency of the foreign government; and (ii) a 20 percent postjudgment interest rate on a foreign judgment, as provided by the law of the foreign state; but the trial court, in recognizing a foreign judgment, may not enter a California judgment imposing postjudgment interest on the California judgment at a rate greater than 10 percent as provided by California law. Thus, we affirm the trial court’s judgment recognizing the foreign judgment, but reverse the imposition of a 20 percent postjudgment rate of interest on the California judgment recognizing the foreign judgment.

BACKGROUND2

Defendant and appellant Ik Chi Lee (Lee) was the chief executive officer of plaintiff Hyundai Securities Co., Ltd. (Hyundai) from 1996 to 2000. Several individual shareholders of Hyundai brought in Korea a shareholders’ derivative action in the Seoul Southern District Court against Lee, as an officer of Hyundai, for, among other things,…