Enforcing foreign judgment - claimant seeking recovery of damages awarded in US court - judgment sum including compensatory damages and multiple damages - only multiple damages unenforceable

Lewis v Panos Eliades and Others: CA (Lords Justice Potter, Carnwath and Jacob): 8 December 2003

The claimant obtained judgment in New York against the defendants for $7,273,641 (3,982,065).

The judgment included separately quantified damages for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty and $396,082 basic damages for racketeering, contrary to the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations (RICO) Act.

Under the RICO Act the claimant was automatically entitled to a trebling of the basic RICO award, which would increase it to $1,188,246.

On the claimant's claim to recover the judgment sum in England the master gave him summary judgment under CPR part 24 against each of the defendants for $6,273,641, being the judgment sum less an agreed $1m set-off, interest and costs.

The defendants appealed on the ground that since the judgment sum included an award of multiple damages the claimant was precluded from recovering any part of the judgment sum, by virtue of section 5 of the Protection of Trading Interests Act 1980.

The judge dismissed the appeal and upheld the master's award, holding that the claimant was entitled to recover the damages awarded for fraud and breach of fiduciary duty and the basic RICO award of $396,082, which had not at that stage been the subject of multiplication.

The defendants appealed.

Before the Court of Appeal hearing the original New York judgment was replaced, nunc pro tunc, by a single composite judgment for $8,065,805, which included the trebled RICO award.

It was agreed on appeal that the 1980 Act precluded enforcement of the whole of the $1,188,246 RICO damages with the result that the judge should not have included in his judgment the $396,082 basic RICO award.

Mark Warwick (instructed by Jeffrey Green Russell) for the defendants; Ian Mill QC and Adrian Briggs (instructed by Forbes Anderson) for the claimant.

Held, dismissing the appeal, but reducing the award by $396,082 to disallow recovery of the basic RICO award, that the fact that a money judgment was in the form a single judgment for the total of its separately quantifiable parts should not prevent enforcement of the unexceptionable parts; that section 5(1) was to be read as precluding proceedings for recovery at common law only to the extent that the judgment sought to be enforced was for an amount arrived at by multiplying a sum assessed as compensation for the loss or damage sustained by the person in whose favour the judgment was given; and that, accordingly, the judgment was enforceable save as to the whole of the $1,118,246 RICO award.

(WLR)