Case Name: Helene Arpels, Respondent, v. Louis Arpels, Appellant
Court: New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division
Jurisdiction: New York
Decision Date: 1959-12-08
Citations: 9 A.D.2d 336
Docket Number: 
Parties: Helene Arpels, Respondent, v. Louis Arpels, Appellant.
Judges: 
Reporter: Appellate Division Reports
Volume: 9
Pages: 336–345

Head Matter:
Helene Arpels, Respondent, v. Louis Arpels, Appellant.
First Department,
December 8, 1959.
Charles Roden of counsel (Richard L. Russell with him on the brief; Sol A. Rosenblatt, attorney), for appellant.
Milton S. Gould of counsel (Arthur S. Frieclman and Martin London with him on the brief; Gallop CUmenko & Gould, attorneys), for respondent.

Opinion:
Bergan, J.
This is a suit to restrain by injunction the maintenance in France of an action for divorce. The defendant husband is a native and a citizen of the Republic of France; the plaintiff wife is a native of Monaco, now living in New York, but an alien and concededly subject to French law in respect of the subject matter of the French suit.
The parties were married in France in 1933 and lived there until the war period in 1940 when they came to New York. After the war was over they renewed contacts with France where the husband had owned, and continues now to own, a "substantial residential property" and which he maintains "as a permanent place of residence " on "a full year-round basis, with servants ".
The wife alleges she is now domiciled in New York, but her papers do not show where. She alleges the husband is also domiciled in a New York hotel; but he shows without dispute that he has business interests in France; that he spends substantial time in his permanent place of residence in France and elsewhere outside of New York, while his " only place of dwelling in New York is at the Plaza Hotel". The husband has business interests in New York upon which he also spends substantial parts of his time. Plaintiff also has maintained personal contacts with France and her own affidavit shows she was personally within the jurisdiction of the French court, " temporarily sojourning " in Paris in October, 1958 when the French action for divorce was instituted against her.
While the parties were in the United States an action for judicial separation was instituted in the New York Supreme Court by the wife upon which a judgment was entered November 1, 1954 in her favor ' ' consented to as to form and substance " by the husband's attorneys. The judgment incorporated part of a separation agreement between the parties which provided $18,000 annually for the support of the wife and which also provided, as to support, that the obligation would survive any action for divorce; and if an action for divorce were instituted in New York "or in any other jurisdiction " the agreement would be incorporated in any judgment entered, on approval of the court taking jurisdiction, and the wife would make no application for additional alimony or counsel fees.
The agreement also provided for the maintenance by the husband of an insurance policy of $10,000 on his life, of which the wife was beneficiary; but in respect of this it was agreed that if there was a divorce in any jurisdiction against the wife on grounds recognized in New York, this part of the obligation should terminate. It is clear that the obligation to pay $18,000 a year, however, was to survive any such judgment.
The court at Special Term has denied defendant's motion to dismiss the complaint and has granted the plaintiff's motion for a temporary injunction. This order opens to consideration the basic question of New York's judicial policy in respect of injunctive restraint upon access to a foreign court in a marital suit by a party concerning whose marital rights there has been a prior New York adjudication.
In some circumstances restraint upon such access will readily follow; but it ought to be equally clear that there are other circumstances in which the injunctive process will not readily be made available; and still others in which it will not be allowed at all.
The practice of allowing injunctive relief against marital suits in other jurisdictions grew up largely because of the nature and complexify of the Federal structure of the United States; where on one hand there was easy mobility from State to State and one of the parties to a marriage could by moving across a State line and changing his residence carry with him a part of a divisible marital domicile which in turn is a factor in the power to adjudicate rights resting on the marriage; and on the other hand where every State was bound by the Constitution to give full faith and credit to judgments granted by other States. The injunctive process became a useful instrument to the protection of the marital relationship and to judgments based thereon.
The decision in Williams v. North Carolina (317 U. S. 287; 325 U. S. 226) imposed a compulsion on State courts in the recognition of matrimonial judgments rendered in other States which led New York to make available injunctive relief because of the danger to the marital status of our own citizens that such recognition implied.
Indeed, equitable intervention seemed the most adequate available relief against the " tangled marital situations " which Frankfurter, J., noted arise as an incident to living in a Federal union " where citizens pass freely from one state to another " bringing with either party, on acquiring a new State residence, jurisdiction over the marital status of both (Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 304). In New York this situation was met on frank ground by allowing an injunction. (Garvin v. Garvin, 302 N. Y. 96; Hammer v. Hammer, 303 N. Y. 481; cf. Caldwell v. Caldwell, 298 N. Y. 146.)
But before the Williams decision, and during the period when, in reliance on Haddock v. Haddock (201 U. S. 562), New York regarded itself competent to look upon the acceptance and recognition of matrimonial judgments of other States affecting New York residents as a question of comity, guided by our own policy, the injunctive process was very sparingly allowed; and it is to be noted that it was usually denied. (See, e.g., Goldstein v. Goldstein, 283 N. Y. 146, which rested in part on Haddock, and Guggenheim v. Wahl, 203 N. Y. 390.)
Our former judicial policy in relation to the effect of divorces in other States was stated in Hubbard v. Hubbard (228 N. Y. 81, 85): " Whether or not the operation of a foreign decree of divorce will contravene the policy or wrong or injure citizens of the state is exclusively for its courts to determine. They are the final judges of the occasions on which the exercise of comity will or will not make for justice or morality
This policy of sparing use of the injunctive process has been continued since Williams v. North Carolina in respect of matrimonial proceedings in foreign countries where we still may exercise the right, as we formerly did as to other States, to accept or not accept the judgment as a matter of policy and comity (Rosenbaum v. Rosenbaum, 309 N. Y. 371).
And we have always, as a matter of course, exercised a very large measure of discretion in determining the effect we will accord to matrimonial judgments of other countries. We examine closely the jurisdiction of the court over the parties and the subject matter, and, indeed, sometimes " scrutinize " the "acts of the parties ". (Martens v. Martens, 284 N. Y. 363, 366, Sears, J.)
The basis of recognition of judgments of the courts of foreign Nations is comity; and this is a recognition which depends, when the last word is said, upon the policy and sense of justice of the domestic court. For a general discussion of the principle see Corpus Juris Secundum (Yol. 27-B, Divorce, § 329, p. 790).
It is also a general principle guiding the consideration of injunctive relief against the prosecution of foreign actions, that injunctions will not be granted where " adequate relief in the court in which the action is brought ' ' can be obtained by the party seeking the injunction; or because of distrust of the foreign court by such a party, or because he prefers to stay in the courts of his own State, or " from considerations of mere inconvenience or expense ". (43 C. J. S., Injunctions, § 49, pp. 501, 502.)
Defendant in the action now before us is an alien who seeks to invoke the domestic law of his own country to adjudicate a marital dispute with an alien wife who was personally in that country when the action there was commenced.
To enjoin such an action between parties who are not citizens here, but who are subject to the laws of the other Nation, would be an extraordinary insinuation of the processes of our domestic institutions into the judicial action of a foreign Nation.
We might not recognize, or might give a limited recognition to, a resulting judgment that we would regard as offensive to our policy; but to prevent in advance a citizen of another Nation from appealing to the courts of his own Country, is quite a different thing; and it turns on a basically different principle. There are, perhaps, circumstances where restraint might have to be imposed by the sheer necessities of the case; but there is here no showing of any such necessity.
That we did at one time enter a consent matrimonial judgment between the aliens does not require us either to adopt them as citizens, to accept them as wards, or to throw extraordinary protections around that judgment which will save it always against further adjudications on new facts by courts of their own Country.
The difference is manifest between this case and the case of the New York husband who, moving to Nevada and, residing there, taking the marital status with him, seeks to undo what New York has done for the New York wife, or to make hazardous and difficult for the New York wife the defense in Nevada of the New York judgment.
There we would be compelled to accept the Nevada judgment if there was a bona fide residence; here we would not be compelled by the Constitution to accept the French judgment.
Where the action in the foreign Nation is so obviously and patently defective in respect of jurisdiction of the subject matter that there seems no possibility at all that we would recognize the resulting judgment, injunctive relief will be denied because there is plainly no need for it (Rosenbaum v. Rosenbaum, 309 N. Y. 371, supra). But that case does not hold that injunctive relief will be granted in every case where we might recognize a judgment of a foreign Nation on grounds of comity. A fair view of the cases as a whole in New York indicates that we meet the question of the propriety of the foreign judgment when we are asked to accept it as a matter of comity rather than by injunctive restraint in advance.
The rules of comity between civilized States perhaps indicate that we would ordinarily accept the judgment of France in relation to the marital rights of a French citizen certainly where personal jurisdiction had been acquired, not as a matter of compulsion but as a matter of policy; and it is but another branch of the rule of comity which would cause us not to be led easily to interfere with the foreign judicial proceeding in the process of litigation.
There seems no good reason on general policy, nor under the facts of this case, why we should stop the process of French adjudication between aliens. Our judgment of separation certainly did not contemplate that for grounds later arising between the parties the marriage might not be terminated by the courts of another country acquiring jurisdiction of the subject matter.
The separation agreement which the parties themselves made contemplated the possibility of a divorce " in any other jurisdiction ' ' and made provision for this.
There is no tenable suggestion that the court in France will not enforce the agreement as to alimony; and if it does not, that will be time enough to invoke relief here. The possibility that the $10,000 insurance policy may be cancelled as a result of a French judgment of divorce exists, but this is what the parties contemplated and the possibility is not a ground for our present judicial interposition in the French action.
Process in the French action was served according to French law by leaving the notice with a maid at defendant's place of "temporary sojourn " in Paris. If jurisdiction in an action over a French marriage was obtained by fair notice to a defendant actually in France and subject in this respect to French law and to the authority of French courts, we would not undertake to make a ruling that the French court is without power because our own municipal rules governing the formalities to be observed in serving process may require something different.
Hence, if we take the facts as shown by the complaint and plaintiff's affidavits to be true, interference with the French action would, after a plenary trial establishing all those facts, not be warranted on the merits and a permanent injunction would be denied as a matter of discretion.
The order should be reversed on the law and the facts, with costs to defendant-appellant; the motion for temporary injunction denied, and the complaint dismissed.