Enforcement of foreign court orders in the USA Can non-US court orders against US entities be honored/enforced in the US? Say if I sue a Californian company in a New Zealand court (which happens to assume its jurisdiction) and win some monies, would that judgment be any practicable to enforce in California?
Usually, but not always. In California, this is governed primarily by the Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act. California Code of Civil Procedure §§ 1713-1724. The general rule is that the judgment of a foreign court in a country with a legitimate legal system (like New Zealand), that had jurisdiction over the parties and the subject-matter, is enforceable through a summary process that does not reconsider the merits of the foreign money judgment, if the person seeking to enforce the judgment can establish those facts. See § 1716(a)-(b). But there are many exceptions to the general rule. See §§ 1715(b) (taxes, fines, penalties, some domestic relations judgments), 1716(c) (seven grounds for procedural irregularities, a ground for public policy exceptions, and certain defamation judgments). Section 1717 of the Act provides for certain exceptions to the exceptions. There are also federal law exceptions in addition to those in the act, including one applicable to foreign defamation case judgments. But these laws rarely have much practical effects beyond the California statute in cases involving purely money judgments that are governed by the California statute. Injunctive and other non-monetary relief granted by a foreign court is less frequently enforceable, and when it is, is not governed by a simple, summary statutory process from this statute. Special rules apply, in particular, to foreign child custody judgments. The summary process, when there is no other pending case in California between the parties is as follows: &quot;If recognition of a foreign-country judgment is sought as an original matter, the issue of recognition shall be raised by filing an action seeking recognition of the foreign-country judgment.&quot; § 1718(a). It is legally possible to file and prosecute a case like this one pro se in California, and it is unlikely that an in person hearing would be required in a case like this one. Usually, one could prevail in motion practice or with a remotely conducted hearing (especially in the COVID era). Whether an in person evidentiary hearing was required in a case like this would depend a great deal on the nature of the defense to recognition of the foreign judgment asserted. But, the better practice would be to hire a California lawyer to handle it for you. Typically, the cost of doing so would be the filing fee, the cost of serving the judgment debtor with process, and something on the order of $1000-$3000 in legal fees. So, it would be much less expensive than a full fledged new lawsuit, but would be too expensive to be practical in the case of a small claims sized judgment in most cases.
I'm not sure about USA law, it's probably similar to UK law. In the UK a trademark is registered for a particular business activity, and you can't just blanket register for "all" activities as that would be anti-competitive. I have a trademark "Dreamcraft" for dream interpretation and related activities. However, the name "Dreamcraft" is also a registered trademark for a company selling luxury yachts, and again for a company selling up-market craft materials. A website or organisation that is a gripe-site using the same name would not be in breach of any of these trademarks because it wouldn't be in direct competition with any of these companies.
When you breach a contract, you can get sued in local court, and if you don't show up to defend yourself, default judgment will be entered against you. Then the aggrieved party will have to collect, but the court in Washington (to invent a jurisdiction) can't enforce an order against a person in Norway (to invent another jurisdiction). So the aggrieved party would need to take enforcement of the judgment to the Norwegian courts. In the actual case of Norway, this is fairly simple, you just call an attorney in Norway to do the paperwork. It might be harder if the other jurisdiction is Belarus. If you return to the US, even if there is a money judgment against you for the rent owed, you will not be arrested for that debt. Depending on the state (about half of the states), you might be arrested for failing to comply with a court order to pay the debt. The difference lies in refusing to comply with a court order, versus simply having a debt. The State Department conveniently lists the reasons for denying a visa. Owing money or having an uncollected judgment against you is not one of the possible reasons, in fact even having been ordered by a court to pay, ignoring the order, and the court issuing an arrest warrant does not make you inadmissible.
The law in every country where your service is available prevails. That means that if your servers are in Estonia, your file storage is in Lithuania, your company is in Switzerland, you are in France, you hold Thai citizenship, your users are in the USA and the signal transits through the U.K., Belgium, Germany, Canada and Poland then you are subject to the laws of each and every one of them. In addition, if China has reason to believe that the stored files contain matters relating to their citizens then they can take an interest. And so on and so forth ... A country has jurisdiction wherever it wants to have jurisdiction subject to the limits of and its ability to actually enforce its laws. What you are proposing is certainly illegal in many countries and you need to seek professional legal advice - not rely on strangers on the internet.
When you are in another country, you are subject to their laws - you may be arrested and go through the due process as defined by that countries laws. This potentially means anything from a fine, to incarceration or deportation or even execution, depending on the local countries laws. A good example is the caning of American citizen Michael Fay in 1994 by the Singapore authorities, as a judicial punishment for vandalism, or the case of Swiss citizen Oliver Fricker, who was also caned in 2010 for vandalism.
Without regards to the actual case and the particular countries involved, I am wondering how it is even possible that a court in one country orders the whole another country to do something, let alone when the two countries do not even formally have diplomatic relations. The main statute that is relevant in the U.S. is the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FISA) of 1976. In general foreign states are immune from liability in U.S. courts (and most courts of the developed world) subject to certain exceptions, the most common of which are as follows: Foreign state waives its immunity explicitly or implicitly Commercial activities by foreign state in or directly affecting the United States Property taken in violation of international law is at issue Rights in U.S. property acquired by succession or gift or rights in immovable property situated in the United States are at issue Money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury, death or damage to or loss of property caused by its tortious act or omission, occurring in the United States Enforcement of an arbitration agreement made by the foreign state with or for a private party Money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death that was caused by an act of torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage taking or their support, if the foreign state is a designated sponsor of terrorism Admiralty lawsuit to enforce a maritime lien against a vessel or cargo of the foreign state, based on commercial activity The exception above in bold was probably the one applied in the North Korean case. The only countries to which that exception applies are North Korea, Syria, Sudan and Iran. (There are also separate similar rules related to countries with whom the U.S. is in a declared war.) There is sporadic ongoing constitutional separation of powers litigation in the U.S. over whether a FISA authorized lawsuit can proceed over the objections of the President as expressed by the U.S. State Department. The argument that FISA is unconstitutional in this context is that diplomacy and foreign policy is exclusively an executive branch power to the exclusion of Congress and the judiciary, but for the most part, this extreme position has been rejected in recent years. A conservative U.S. Supreme Court, however, could revisit this question (conservative judges tend to favor more absolute executive branch authority in foreign affairs). Once a party wins, however, the winner needs to identify foreign assets subject to the jurisdiction of the court from which to collect the judgment, such as gold deposits or U.S. governmental or corporate bonds or ships docked in U.S. ports, owned by the country. In strong contrast to the case above, the UK media recently overtly demonstrated disobedience of a New Zealand court name suppression order: a man arrested in NZ for allegedly committing an appalling crime was granted temporary name suppression, and that was ignored by the UK media. I am wondering if there is anything that would stop a New Zealand court to hold the UK to account just like the US court just did North Korea. In the New Zealand case, the remedy would be to bring suit against the particular newspapers or reporters involved, rather than the state. But, the U.K. might not enforce those judgments if those defendants lost, so enforcement might be limited to New Zealand based assets and persons, and then, only if the New Zealand court found that it had jurisdiction over the defendants under New Zealand law. So, this isn't really analogous. So, in general, are there any internationally recognised laws/treaties/protocols etc. that define if/when a court in one country can assert jurisdiction over the whole another country and hold it to account? Or is that completely up to the court and whatever extremes it dares to come up with? See above in the U.S. case. Most countries have similar statutes or case law to FISA which codified the case law applying customary international law at the time that it was adopted. One example that comes into my mind is the European Court of Human Rights: if a country signed the European Convention on Human Rights, it can be held to account by the court. But what conventions, if any, can be applied to the two cases above? The European Court of Human Rights case is one of consent to the jurisdiction of an international body by treaty. Countries like the UK and NZ have statutes or treaties governing when a foreign judgment (e.g. a judgment from a New Zealand court) will be recognized domestically. There are also usually laws governing when people present in one state will be extradited to another, usually in the form of a bilateral treaty between the affected states.
Is it actually necessary for businesses (such as a Small Town News USA Inc) that do not reside in EU to care about GDPR? Only if they offer goods/services to or monitor behavior of people in the EU (Art. 3(2)). Note that: having a commerce-oriented website that is accessible to EU residents does not by itself constitute offering goods or services in the EU. Rather, a business must show intent to draw EU customers, for example, by using a local language or currency. If it is then how (and by whom) would compliance be audited and/or enforced? Supervisory Authorities will care of it.
First of all, if your Delaware LLC earns money, you will pay tax in America on that money. America still taxes "foreigners" on American income, just not on"global" income. That is, unless the U.S. has a tax reciprocity treaty with your home country, Malaysia. I don't know about Malaysian law, but I am writing as an American about American law regarding the Seychelles (and I am not a lawyer). The following is only as an "example." If you set up an LLC in the Seychelles, you could, in theory, avoid American tax by accruing income there. In practice, if you did nothing but "banking" in the Seychelles, America would look at your lack of "value added" there, and could tax you on Seychelles income as if your corporation was American. The way to make such a claim stick (typically in a place like Ireland), is to set up a manufacturing or operating facility (e.g. call center) there so that you were shipping goods or services from your offshore operation. Then you'd have a strong claim in America that your operation actually earned most of its income abroad, and the U.S. company was just a holding company.