{"id":3931,"date":"2026-01-01T09:56:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/?p=3931"},"modified":"2026-01-01T09:56:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T20:56:25","slug":"fraud-in-foreign-judgments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/fraud-in-foreign-judgments\/","title":{"rendered":"Fraud in foreign judgments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fraud in foreign judgments<\/strong><\/p>\n

(By Jack Wass, Stout Street Chambers)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New Zealand Court of Appeal recently released an important judgment concerning the circumstances in which the New Zealand court may refuse to recognise a foreign judgment on the ground that it was procured by fraud.<\/p>\n

Shi v Hebei Huaneng Industrial Development Company Ltd <\/em>[2025] NZCA 672 was an appeal against a decision of the High Court to recognise a 2019 default judgment given by a Chinese court arising out of a guarantee given by Mr Shi. The proceeding has been the subject of a number of interlocutory judgments, including arguments (not apparently pursued at trial) about the extent to which judgments of Chinese courts should be denied recognition because of alleged potential for political influence: see an earlier blog post here<\/a> and Jaiden Tucker\u2019s thesis<\/a>, cited by the Court of Appeal.<\/p>\n

On appeal, Mr Shi relied on two defences to recognition. The first was a breach of natural justice, which the Court of Appeal promptly rejected. The second was an argument that the Chinese judgment had been procured by fraud. The Court of Appeal allowed Mr Shi to run this argument for the first time on appeal and remitted the matter to the High Court for trial on that point.<\/p>\n

Three points of interest may be noted.<\/p>\n

First, the Court of Appeal affirmed the continued application of the rule in Abouloff v Oppenheimer & Co <\/em>(1882) 10 QBD 295 that the defence of fraud may be advanced by a judgment debtor whether or not they could have run the defence at trial in the foreign court (or did so unsuccessfully).<\/p>\n

Second, the Court adopted the principle\u2014found in cases under the Reciprocal Enforcement of Judgments Act 1934\u2014that a trial on the question of fraud is necessary where the court is left with a sense of \u201cuneasiness\u201d: Svirskis v Gibson <\/em>[1977] 2 NZLR 4 (CA). Although Mr Shi had not raised the fraud allegation in the enforcement proceedings in the High Court, the Court of Appeal was prepared to admit further evidence going to that issue, and ultimately allow the appeal, because the evidence was sufficient to give rise to that sense of uneasiness. Although Mr Shi may count himself lucky to have been given in effect a third chance to make his case, the logic of the Court of Appeal\u2019s decision was that if Abouloff<\/em> required the enforcing court to form its own view on the allegation of fraud, and the evidence produced on appeal gave rise to an arguable case on the point, it needed to be properly determined.<\/p>\n

Third, the case illustrates the complexities involved in the enforcement of default judgments. Although they are enforceable in principle, the fact that they only involve participation by one party gives rise to risks. The alleged fraud in this case was not of wholesale fabrication or bribery, but that the plaintiff failed to disclose documents (including apparently a rollover of the principal agreements without a corresponding rollover of Mr Shi\u2019s guarantee) that could have entirely exonerated Mr Shi. The line between challenging the merits of a foreign judgment (which is not permitted in recognition proceedings) and raising an allegation of fraud can be a blurred one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fraud in foreign judgments (By Jack Wass, Stout Street Chambers) The New Zealand Court of Appeal recently released an important judgment concerning the circumstances in which the New Zealand court may refuse to recognise a foreign judgment on the ground that it was procured by fraud. Shi v Hebei Huaneng Industrial Development Company Ltd [2025] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3931\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.otago.ac.nz\/conflicts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}