Woo v. SpackmanWoo v. Spackman
Before Kayatta, Selya, and Barron, Circuit Judges.
Darryl Stein, with whom John Han and Kobre & Kim LLP were on brief, for appellant.
Douglas S. Brooks, with whom Joseph B. Hernandez and LibbyHoopes, P.C. were on brief, for appellee.
I. BACKGROUND
The threshold questions that we must resolve pertain to the jurisdiction of the district court to register a state-court judgment. Even so, we find it useful to start with an overview of the history and travel of the case.
The protagonists in the underlying controversy are plaintiff-appellant Sang Cheol Woo (Woo) and defendant Charles C. Spackman (Spackman). Woo accused Spackman of a violation of Korean securities laws, occurring nearly two decades ago, in connection with Woo‘s ownership of shares in a company, publicly listed in Korea, that Spackman controlled. Woo alleges that Spackman, acting as chief executive officer of the Korean company, engaged in a “self-dealing merger.” In that merger, the Korean company acquired another entity that Spackman owned. Spackman profited handsomely, Woo alleges, even though the stock price of the Korean company plummeted when it was ascertained that the acquired firm had scant value.
In the wake of this debacle, Woo and other investors sued Spackman in a Korean court for violations of Korean securities laws. After years of litigation, the Supreme Court of Korea in October of 2013 affirmed a judgment in favor of Woo and other investors for approximately $4.5 million. Spackman struggled to obtain relief from this judgment, but his final hope for a retrial was dashed by the Supreme Court of Korea in May of 2018.
Unable to collect any money from Spackman in Korea, Woo sought recognition of the Korean judgment in New York. See
Like its Korean predecessor, the New York judgment went unpaid. Seeking satisfaction, Woo repaired to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts and filed the New York judgment electronically on December 21, 2018, captioning that filing as a “Registration of State Court Judgment“. It consisted solely of the decision and order of the New York court. Woo then served multiple subpoenas on Spackman‘s wife, movant-appellee So-Hee Kim (Kim), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seeking deposition testimony and other discovery. See
The district court concluded that section 1963 did not authorize the registration of state-court judgments and that, therefore, it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. See Woo v. Spackman (Woo I), 2019 WL 6715134, at *1 (D. Mass. Dec. 10, 2019). The court expressed the view that this
Woo moved to reconsider, suggesting for the first time that federal subject-matter jurisdiction might exist by reason of diversity of citizenship and amount in controversy. See
II. ANALYSIS
On appeal, Woo advances a gallimaufry of arguments. We first consider his argument that section 1963 is itself a source of federal jurisdiction because — in his view — it authorizes a federal court to register a state-court judgment. We then consider Woo‘s remaining arguments, each of which suggests that the district court possessed some alternate basis for subject-matter jurisdiction.2
A. Registration Under 28 U.S.C. § 1963 .
Woo‘s principal argument is that
By its terms,
A judgment in an action for the recovery of money or property entered in any court of appeals, district court, bankruptcy court, or in the Court of International Trade may be registered by filing a certified copy of the judgment in any other district or, with respect to the Court of International Trade, in any judicial district, when the judgment has become final . . . .
In making this determination, we do not write on a blank slate. Three of the four courts of appeals that have addressed the issue directly have held that the reach of section 1963 does not extend that far. See Caballero v. Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, 945 F.3d 1270, 1274 (10th Cir. 2019); Mobil Cerro Negro, Ltd. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 863 F.3d 96, 122-23 (2d Cir. 2017); Fox Painting Co. v. NLRB, 16 F.3d 115, 117 (6th Cir. 1994). And the fourth such court, while less definitive, has not held to the contrary. See GE Betz, Inc. v. Zee Co., 718 F.3d 615, 625 (7th Cir. 2013).
Against this backdrop, we begin our inquiry with first principles. Statutory interpretation ought to start with the statutory
The text of section 1963 states that a judgment from a rendering court may be registered in “any other district or, with respect to the Court of International Trade, in any judicial district.”
The overall contours of the statutory text are consistent with this view. Congress twice amended the statute‘s list of rendering courts over the last few decades, see
There is more. The courts listed in the statute as possible originators of the underlying judgment track the constituent courts that, in the aggregate, comprise virtually the whole of the federal judicial system. Although Woo notes that certain states have “court[s] of appeal[s]” and “district court[s],” many states do not. We think it outlandish to suggest that Congress intended to make the availability of section 1963‘s registration procedure dependent upon the nomenclature that a state happens to assign to its courts, and we do not read section 1963 as accomplishing so curious a result. Cf. Inmates of Suffolk Cnty. Jail v. Rouse, 129 F.3d 649, 655 (1st Cir. 1997) (recognizing that courts should avoid statutory interpretations that produce “bizarre” results).
Swimming upstream, Woo attempts to rely on the Seventh Circuit‘s decision in GE Betz as authority for the proposition that section 1963 authorizes a federal court to register a state-court judgment. As we explain below, his reliance is misplaced.
In GE Betz, the court considered a case in which the plaintiff sought to register a state-court judgment in another state. See 718 F.3d at 617. The defendant removed the case to federal court, alleging that the requirements for removal under
Contrary to Woo‘s importunings, the GE Betz court did not hold that section 1963 itself authorized federal courts to register state-court judgments. Although the court described the statute as “ambiguous” and “not clear,” id., it decided only that section 1963 did not bar the registration of state-court judgments where another basis for jurisdiction was manifest, see id. at 625. The court went on to examine alternate jurisdictional theories — a necessary corollary of its conclusion that section 1963 itself does not authorize the registration of a state-court judgment in a federal district court. See id.
That ends this aspect of the matter. We hold that section 1963 says what it means and means what it says. We thus conclude that section 1963 does not, in and of itself, authorize federal courts to register state-court judgments. Even so, we recognize — as did the Seventh Circuit in GE Betz, see id. — that section 1963 does not foreclose other avenues for enforcing a state-court judgment in federal court where some independent basis for federal jurisdiction exists.3 Thus, we turn to Woo‘s claim that there are independent grounds for federal jurisdiction here.
B. Alternate Grounds for Jurisdiction.
With respect to alternate grounds for federal jurisdiction, Woo chiefly argues that the district court had jurisdiction by reason of diverse citizenship and the existence of a controversy in the requisite amount. See
We assay “the denial of a motion for reconsideration for abuse of discretion.” Caribbean Mgmt. Grp. v. Erikon LLC, 966 F.3d 35, 44 (1st Cir. 2020). In general terms, such a motion is a vehicle for a party either to bring forth previously unavailable evidence or to show “that the original judgment was premised on a manifest error of law or fact.” Id. at 44-45 (quoting Ira Green, Inc. v. Mil. Sales & Serv. Co., 775 F.3d 12, 28 (1st Cir. 2014)). Woo‘s motion for reconsideration, though, did not satisfy either of these criteria. In it, he pointed to no newly discovered evidence previously unavailable to him; nor did he identify any mistake of law or fact purportedly infecting the district court‘s order of dismissal. As relevant here, the motion sought to advance, for the first time, a new and previously unmentioned theory of jurisdiction — a theory that had been available to Woo all along.
Woo‘s attempt to shoehorn a new and previously available theory into a
Woo made no such allegations here. His initial filing in the district court contained no allegations at all concerning the parties’ citizenship,4 nor did he even mention — in any pleading, memorandum, or other document served prior to his motion for reconsideration — the possibility that diversity jurisdiction might exist. Thereafter, Woo made two filings in response to Kim‘s motion to quash, but neither filing contained either an assertion that diversity jurisdiction existed or facts adumbrating the existence of such jurisdiction. Woo‘s second reply is especially telling because — after Kim had raised the specter of a jurisdictional defect — Woo expounded on other possible jurisdictional theories but did not mention the possibility of diversity jurisdiction.
Woo did, of course, refer to diversity of citizenship in his motion for reconsideration. Here, however, that was too late. “A motion for reconsideration is not the venue to undo procedural snafus or permit a party to advance arguments [he] should have developed prior to judgment.” Biltcliffe v. CitiMortgage, Inc., 772 F.3d 925, 930 (1st Cir. 2014). As we have explained, when a plaintiff fails properly to develop a theory in his filings prior
to dismissal of his action, there can be “no abuse of discretion in the district court‘s refusal to address that theory on a motion for reconsideration.” Iverson v. City of Boston, 452 F.3d 94, 104 (1st Cir. 2006); see Caribbean Mgmt. Grp., 966 F.3d at 45 (“[I]t is settled beyond hope of contradiction that, at least in the absence of exceptional circumstances, a party may not advance new arguments in a motion for reconsideration when such arguments could and should have been advanced at an earlier stage of the litigation.“). So it is here.
Little more need be said.5 Jurisdiction is the cornerstone of every federal court action, and “jurisdictional facts ought to be gathered and assessed before an action is commenced.” Bearbones, 936 F.3d at 16. It follows, as night follows day, that
Woo has another arrow in his quiver. He argues that the district court could have exercised jurisdiction to register the judgment simply by availing itself of Massachusetts law. In support, he points to a pair of Massachusetts statutes which, he says, provide authority for the district court to register the New
York judgment. See
This argument is futile. To begin,
In all events, there is an even more fundamental flaw in Woo‘s argument. The availability of state enforcement mechanisms in this case is dependent upon the antecedent establishment of federal jurisdiction (by, say, the proper registration of an underlying judgment or pleading facts sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the diversity statute). See
230 F.3d 489, 498 n.8 (1st Cir. 2000) (“Nor is it sufficient to rely on the incorporation of state procedures in
We add a coda. It is of no consequence that Woo identifies what he describes as “more than 70 state-court judgments” that district courts sitting in the District of Massachusetts have previously enforced. There is no indication that jurisdiction was contested in any of those cases and, thus, they have no precedential force. So, too, the cases that Woo cites in an effort to demonstrate that federal courts “repeatedly” enforce foreign judgments under state law are inapposite. In each of them, the resort to state procedures coincided with the existence of federal jurisdiction. See, e.g., Wright v. Bank of Am., N.A., 517 F. App‘x 304, 306 (6th Cir. 2013) (affirming district court‘s enforcement of state-court judgment while sitting in diversity); Endocare, Inc. v. Technologias Urologicas, Inc., 950 F. Supp. 2d 341, 344 (D.P.R. 2013) (explaining that district court has authority to enforce state-court judgment while exercising diversity jurisdiction).
III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above, the district court‘s order of dismissal for want of subject-matter jurisdiction and its denial of Woo‘s motion for reconsideration are both
Affirmed.