United States Court of Appeals

For the First Circuit

No. 20-1527

SANG CHEOL WOO,

Plaintiff, Appellant,

v.

CHARLES C. SPACKMAN,

Defendant,

SO-HEE KIM,

Movant, Appellee.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. Allison D. Burroughs, U.S. District Judge]

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.

February 12, 2021
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SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us, as a 

matter of first impression in this circuit, to explore the scope 

and reach of 28 U.S.C. § 1963 — a statute that permits the 

registration of certain judgments in a federal district court. 

Concluding that the New York state-court judgment proffered by the 

appellant does not come within the statutory sweep and that no 

other cognizable basis for federal subject-matter jurisdiction has 

been shown, we affirm both the district court's order of dismissal

and its denial of reconsideration.

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 
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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 N.Y.

C.P.L.R. §§ 5301-5309 ("Uniform Foreign Country Money-Judgments 

Recognition Act"). In September of 2018, a New York court 

recognized the Korean judgment and entered a judgment in Woo's 

favor for more than $13 million — a figure that included the 

original Korean judgment amount of approximately $4.5 million plus 

accrued interest at the rate of nine percent per annum — together 

with pro-rated interest for the year 2018. By this time, Spackman 

no longer challenged the finality of the Korean judgment.

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 
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solely of the decision and order of the New York court. Woo then 

served multiple subpoenas on Spackman's wife, movant-appellee SoHee Kim (Kim), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seeking deposition 

testimony and other discovery. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 45. Woo 

asserted that Kim had intimate knowledge of Spackman's financial 

holdings in the United States and that she and Spackman maintained 

a shared residence in Massachusetts within the territorial limits 

of the district court's subpoena power. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 45(c). 

Kim moved to quash, arguing (among other things) that the district 

court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over the underlying 

matter because the registration statute upon which Woo relied, 28 

U.S.C. § 1963, only authorized district courts to register 

judgments of other federal courts. Woo opposed the motion to 

quash.

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 conclusion aligned it with 

the weight of authority elsewhere. See id. at *2-3. Accordingly, 

it dismissed the matter for want of subject-matter jurisdiction 

and dispensed with other pending motions (including Kim's motion 

to quash) as moot. See id. at *3.
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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 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1332(a). The district court denied this motion. See Woo v. 

Spackman (Woo II), 2020 WL 1939692, at *1 (D. Mass. Apr. 22, 2020).

This timely appeal followed. In it, Woo challenges both 

the district court's order of dismissal and its denial of 

reconsideration.1

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 28 U.S.C. § 1963 

permits a district court to register a state-court judgment. This

1 Spackman was not served below, and he has not filed a brief 

on appeal.

2 In the district court, Woo also argued that the New York 

judgment was entitled to full faith and credit in federal court, 

see 28 U.S.C. § 1738, and that federal jurisdiction could be 

premised on this circumstance. This argument has not been renewed 

on appeal and, thus, we deem it abandoned. See United States v. 

Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990).
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argument gives rise to a question of law regarding the district 

court's subject-matter jurisdiction and, thus, engenders de novo 

review. See Fothergill v. United States, 566 F.3d 248, 251 (1st 

Cir. 2009).

By its terms, 28 U.S.C. § 1963 authorizes federal courts 

to register certain judgments entered by certain other courts. 

The relevant text provides:

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 . . . .

28 U.S.C. § 1963. Our task, then, is to determine whether "[a]

judgment . . . in any court of appeals, district court, bankruptcy 

court, or in the Court of International Trade" encompasses 

judgments entered by state courts.

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 
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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 text. See Plumley v. S. Container, Inc., 303 F.3d 364, 

369 (1st Cir. 2002). As a general matter, moreover, courts should 

strive to interpret statutes so that each word in the statutory 

text has meaning. See Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 574 

(1995); Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. v. Azar, 976 F.3d 86, 94 (1st 

Cir. 2020).

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." 28 U.S.C. § 1963 (emphasis supplied). Read in context, 

Congress's use of the word "other" strongly suggests that the

rendering court and the registering court must be part of the same 

family of courts. It is clear beyond peradventure that section

1963 identifies only federal courts as registering courts, and we 

think it follows that the rendering court must be a federal court 

as well. To hold otherwise would be to ignore Congress's carefully 

chosen wording. After all, if Congress had intended the statute 

to include judgments originating in state courts, it would make no 

sense to refer to the registering court as "any other district."
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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 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1963 (1988); id. § 1963 (1996), but on each occasion it specified 

particular federal courts that could serve as rendering courts. 

If Congress had wanted section 1963 to apply to all courts (federal 

and state), there would have been no need for it to enumerate 

particular federal courts from which a judgment could emanate. 

Reading section 1963 to encompass both federal and state courts as 

rendering courts would make the statute's enumeration of 

particular federal courts superfluous — and it is apodictic that 

we should avoid, when possible, interpretations of a statute that 

will render words in the statutory text superfluous. See Nat'l 

Ass'n of Mfrs. v. Dep't of Def., 138 S. Ct. 617, 632 (2018); City 

of Providence v. Barr, 954 F.3d 23, 37 (1st Cir. 2020).

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
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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 statecourt 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 28 

U.S.C. § 1441 (including the existence of diversity jurisdiction) 

were satisfied. See id. at 618. The plaintiff objected to the 

removal and sought a remand, contending that removal was improper 

because section 1963 barred federal courts from registering statecourt judgments. See id. at 623.

The Seventh Circuit addressed only a narrow issue as to 

whether section 1963 prohibits federal courts from registering and 

enforcing state-court judgments (even where alternate grounds for

federal jurisdiction exist). See id. at 624-25. The court 

concluded that "§ 1963 does not prohibit the removal of all matters 

related to the registration of state-court judgments." Id. at 

625. It added that a federal court may enforce a state-court 
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judgment if "other requirements for federal jurisdiction" are met. 

Id. at 624.

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.

3 The statute itself makes this clear: section 1963 states, 

in relevant part, that "[t]he procedure prescribed under this 

section is in addition to other procedures provided by law for the 

enforcement of judgments." Nothing in the statutory text (or 
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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 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a). 

This argument, however, faces a high hurdle: prior to the district 

court's entry of its order of dismissal, Woo never so much as 

hinted at the presence of diversity jurisdiction. Instead, Woo 

surfaced his diversity-of-citizenship theory for the first time in 

his motion for reconsideration.

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 

elsewhere, for that matter) indicates that section 1963 shuts the 

federal court's doors to other possible mechanisms for enforcement 

of a state-court judgment.
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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 motion for reconsideration distorts the office of 

such a motion. At the same time, the absence of any pleaded 

jurisdictional facts runs counter to the principle that "[f]ederal 

courts are courts of limited jurisdiction." Kokkonen v. Guardian 

Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994); see In re Olympic 

Mills Corp., 477 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2007). Given this principle, 

it is irrefragable that the burden of establishing jurisdiction 

must fall to the party who asserts it. See Kokkonen, 511 U.S. at 

377; Aversa v. United States, 99 F.3d 1200, 1209 (1st Cir. 1996). 

Thus, we have held that a party asserting the existence of 

diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332 must allege facts 

sufficient to show that the requirements for such jurisdiction are 

satisfied in the particular case. See, e.g., Bearbones, Inc. v. 

Peerless Indem. Ins. Co., 936 F.3d 12, 15 (1st Cir. 2019); Harrison

v. Granite Bay Care, Inc., 811 F.3d 36, 40-41 (1st Cir. 2016); see

also Kale v. Combined Ins. Co. of Am., 924 F.2d 1161, 1163 n.1

(1st Cir. 1991) (holding bare reference to 28 U.S.C. § 1332 in 

string citation not enough to make out claim of diversity 

jurisdiction).
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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 

4 Woo's initial fourteen-page filing consisted solely of the 

New York court decision and order. Those documents contained no 

assertions concerning the parties' citizenship. Nor did Woo at 

any point either amend or move to amend his initial filing to 

include that information.
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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., 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 the district court's rejection of Woo's belated 

effort to switch jurisdictional horses midstream was well within 

the compass of its discretion.

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 

5 Given our conclusion, we need not reach Kim's argument that 

even if the citizenship and amount-in-controversy requirements 

were met, Woo's attempted registration of the state-court judgment 

does not constitute a "civil action[]" under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).
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York judgment. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 218 § 4A ("Massachusetts 

Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act"); id. ch. 235 § 14(a) 

("Executions in actions on judgments").6 

This argument is futile. To begin, chapter 218, § 4A 

was not even in effect at the time Woo attempted to register his

state-court judgment in the district court. Woo attempted to 

register the judgment by filing it on December 21, 2018. But 

chapter 218, § 4A did not take effect until April 1, 2019.

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 Fed. R. Civ. P. 69(a); 

Burgos-Yantín v. Mun. of Juana Díaz, 909 F.3d 1, 8-9 (1st Cir. 

2018) (per curiam); see also 12 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R. 

Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3011 (3d ed. 2014 & Supp. 

2020). A putative plaintiff cannot unlock the door to a federal 

forum merely because some state remedial mechanism would seem to 

suit his purposes. See U.S.I. Props. Corp. v. M.D. Constr. Co., 

6 The first of these state statutes, chapter 218, § 4A, 

describes the circumstances in which a Massachusetts court may 

register a foreign judgment. The second of these state statutes, 

chapter 235, § 14(a), requires that a plaintiff deliver a copy of 

a foreign judgment to the registering court.
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230 F.3d 489, 498 n.8 (1st Cir. 2000) ("Nor is it sufficient to 

rely on the incorporation of state procedures in Rule 69(a) to 

establish federal enforcement jurisdiction.") An independent 

showing of federal jurisdiction is a sine qua non to the use of 

such state-law mechanisms in a federal court. Indeed, Woo's brief

seems to acknowledge that Massachusetts procedures would be 

available only after the requirements for diversity jurisdiction 

have been satisfied. Given our conclusion that Woo has not 

successfully invoked the district court's diversity jurisdiction, 

see text supra, the district court had no way to avail itself of 

Massachusetts law in order to register the New York state-court 

judgment.

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 
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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).

To say more would be to paint the lily. We conclude 

that, in the circumstances at hand, Woo's alternate grounds for 

jurisdiction cannot rescue his case.

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.