Professional Documents
Culture Documents
complaint and amounting in all to 1 008 783 francs in the currency of the
republic of France equivalent to 195 122.47
Answer of Hilton & Co.: That the plaintiffs had no just claim against
the defendant. The defendant also admitted that they gave up their business
in France before the judgment on appeal and that they have no property
within the jurisdiction of France out of which judgment could be collected.
The tribunal of commerce of department of Seine was a tribunal whose
judges were merchants, ship captains, stock brokers and person engaged in
commercial pursuits and of which Charles Fortin had been a member until
shortly before the commencement of the litigation. .
That in the original suits, they were then residents and citizens of the
state of New York and neither of them at that time or within 4 years before
had been within, or resident or domiciled within the jurisdiction of that
tribunal or owed allegiance to France. Nu they were the owners of property
situated in that country which would by the law of France have been liable to
seizure if they did not appear in that tribunal. That they unwillingly and
solely for the purpose of protecting their property, authorized and caused an
agent to appear for them in those proceedings also to compel the production
and inspection of Fortin & COs books and that they sought no affirmative
relief in that tribunal.
They also discovered gross fraud in the account of Fortin. The
arbitrator and tribunal declined to compel Fortin to produce books and
papers for inspection and if they had been produced the judgment would
have been obtained against the defendant.
There was no full and fair trial of the controversies before the
arbitrator, no witness was sworn or affirmed. Charles Fortin was permitted to
make and did make statements not under oath containing falsehood.
Privilege of cross examination was denied to defendants. The arbitrator was
deceived and misled by the false and fraudulent accounts introduced by
Fortin and by the hearsay testimony given without the solemnity of an oath
and without cross examination and by fraudulent suppression of the books
and papers.
According to the defendant it is contrary to natural justice and public
policy that the said judgment should be enforced against a citizen of the US
and that if there had been a full and fair trial upon the merits of the
No law has any effect, of its own force, beyond the limits of the
sovereignty from which its authority is derived. The extent to which the law
of one nation, as put in force within its territory, whether by executive order,
by legislative act, or by judicial decree, shall be allowed to operate within the
dominion of another nation, depends upon what our greatest jurists have
been content to call 'the comity of nations.'
Comity, it is the recognition which one nation allows within its territory
to the legislative, executive, or judicial acts of another nation, having due
regard both to international duty and convenience, and to the rights of its
own citizens, or of other persons was are under the protection of its laws