Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
FOREIGN CURRENCY JUDGMENTS—A CODA
With reference to “The Courts and Foreign Currency Obligations” by Steven Stern,1 it should be noted that in the 1992 Amoco Cadiz limitation of liability litigation, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed a recovery in French francs, noting that the repeal of a statute had eliminated the barrier to entry of judgment in foreign money, and the courts “all over the world enter judgments in currencies other than their own”.2
Most recently, the Federal Court in New York, in confirming such an arbitration award on consent, stated that, although the Second Circuit had consistently required judgments to be entered in U.S. dollars, it had also commented a few years ago that the rule “probably deserves reexamination”.3 Rather than force the parties to the delay and expense of an appeal neither desired, the court entered judgment in Japanese yen, being “persuaded that, were the Second Circuit faced with the question today, it would hold that American courts may enter judgments in foreign currency”.4
The last discussion of currency conversion by the House of Lords came up in The Texaco Melbourne,5 a cargo misdelivery case, where judgment was given in Ghanaian cedis, notwithstanding that rampant inflation had reduced the cedi to only a small fraction of its former worth. Lord Goff noted that the cedi was the currency in which the cargo owner had “felt its loss”.
1. [1995] LMCLQ 494.
2. Re Amoco Cadiz (1992) 954 F.2d 1279, 1327 (7th Cir.).
3. Comptex v. La Bow (1986) 783 F.2d 333, 337 (2d Cir.).
4. Mitsui v. Oceantrawl Corp. (1995) 906 F. Supp. 202; 1996 AMC 558 (S.D.N.Y.). The opinion represents an unusual departure by a trial court from the doctrine of stare decisis. If the parties had disputed its power to act as it did, most likely the court would have entered judgment in dollars, leaving the question of the continued vitality of Second Circuit precedent for determination by the Second Circuit itself.
5. [1994] 1 Lloyd’s Rep. 473 (H.L.); noted J. Knott [1994] LMCLQ 311.
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