Opinion ID: 2382094
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Date of Accrual of Maryland Interest

Text: Smith contends that the Maryland rate of interest should be applied to the Maryland judgment from the date as of which judgment was entered in the Florida District. In support of this contention Smith cites Budish v. Daniel, 417 Mass. 574, 631 N.E.2d 1009 (1994). In Budish, the plaintiff obtained a federal judgment in a copyright infringement action, on March 1, 1993, from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio in the amount of $570,548 `plus statutory interest from the date of this judgment forward as set forth in 28 U.S.C. § 1961,' which at that time was 3.45%. 641 N.E.2d at 1010. The plaintiff then commenced an action in Massachusetts to enforce the judgment, and the defendant defaulted. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, noting its long history of applying the lex fori rule, held that the state's 12% statutory interest rate applied to the foreign judgment. Id. at 1011, 1012-13. The court also held that this rate applied from the date of the Federal judgment. Id. at 1013 n. 7. At the same time, in response to the defendant's argument that the court's ruling would cause forum-shopping, the court noted that any party against whom a Federal court enters a monetary judgment can prevent the prevailing party from shopping around for the highest available postjudgment interest rate by promptly satisfying the judgment. Id. at 1012. Budish `s conclusion that the Massachusetts rate of interest should be applied under the lex fori rule is consistent with Maryland law, as explained above, but Budish `s direction to apply that rate from the date on which the federal judgment was entered is inconsistent with Maryland law. Budish was not an application of the UEFJA, whereas that uniform law directs that the filed foreign judgment has the same effect ... as a judgment of the court in which it is filed. CJ § 11-802(b). Maryland Rule 2-604(b) provides that [a] money judgment shall bear interest at the rate prescribed by law from the date of entry. The date of entry of a Maryland judgment is governed by Rule 2-601(b) which reads: The clerk shall enter a judgment by making a record of it in writing on the file jacket, or on a docket within the file, or in a docket book, according to the practice of each court, and shall record the actual date of the entry. That date shall be the date of the judgment. It is illogical to treat the judgment recorded in the Circuit Court for Harford County as a Maryland judgment, bearing the Maryland rate of post-judgment interest, and then retroactively to apply that rate of interest to the date of entry of judgment in the Florida District, when there was no Maryland judgment. Cf. Joplin Corp. v. State ex rel. Grimes, 570 P.2d 1161, 1163-64 (Okla.1977) (applying the state's UEFJA and its rule that [t]he local law of the forum ... determines the methods by which a judgment of another state is enforced, and further noting that the foreign judgment could not become a lien until the day it was recorded in Oklahoma). We therefore hold that the Maryland judgment carried interest at the rate of 10% per annum from March 4,1996.