Opinion ID: 2382094
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Rate of Post-Judgment Interest in Maryland

Text: The Maryland rule of conflict of laws is that the rate of post-judgment interest on a foreign judgment enforced here in a separate action is determined by the law of the forum ( lex fori ), i.e., by the Maryland rate, and not by the rate of the judgment rendering state ( lex loci ). See Picking v. Local Loan Co., 185 Md. 253, 44 A.2d 462 (1945). That case was a proceeding in Maryland to enforce a confessed judgment obtained in Illinois. The Court found that the transcript of the Illinois judgment offered by the plaintiff was insufficient evidence of the foreign judgment, and remanded the case in order to permit the plaintiff to amend its pleadings. Id. at 264, 44 A.2d at 468. Offering guidance for the proceedings on remand, the Court stated: The defendant complains that the lower court in its judgment allowed interest on the Illinois judgment from the date the Maryland suit was entered. In this she was not injured. There was, of course, no proof of the legal rate of interest in Illinois, but interest was allowed at the legal rate in Maryland.... The allowance [of interest] is governed by the law of the forum. Beilman v. Poe, 138 Md. 482, 487 [114 A. 568]. Id. at 265, 44 A.2d at 469. Beilman, relied upon by the Court in Picking, involved a claim, based upon a New York state court judgment, filed in a Maryland state court receivership. The claimant-judgment creditor complained that it had not been allowed accrued postjudgment interest under New York law and contended that this violated the full faith and credit clause. This Court said that that clause has reference to the fact and validity only of judgments and not to the effect or the manner of their enforcement. That is governed and controlled by the lex fori. 138 Md. at 486, 114 A. at 570. Under Maryland law the receivership court was authorized to disregard interest in distributing the assets of insolvents. Id. at 487, 114 A. at 570. Speaking more generally, the Court said that [i]t has been held in quite a number of jurisdictions in this country and elsewhere that the allowance of interest on foreign judgments is determined by the lex fori. Id. [8] See also Bauernschmidt, 176 Md. at 355, 4 A.2d at 713 (When the enforcement of a foreign judgment or decree is sought in this state, it can only be done in accordance with the provisions of the law applicable to local judgments and decrees.); Hospelhorn v. General Motors Corp., 169 Md. 564, 577, 182 A. 442, 447 (1936) (No execution can be issued upon such [sister state] judgments without a new suit in the tribunals of other states; and they enjoy, not the right of priority or privilege or lien which they have in the state where they are pronounced, but that only which the lex fori gives to them, by its own laws, in their character of foreign judgments. (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Cole v. Cunningham, 133 U.S. 107, 112, 10 S.Ct. 269, 270, 33 L.Ed. 538, 541 (1890))). Moreover, Maryland's conflict of law rule has not been changed by the UEFJA. CJ § 11-802(b) in relevant part provides that [a] filed foreign judgment has the same effect ... as a judgment of the court in which it is filed.