Court Opinion

ID: 9567914
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:58:59.66992+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:23:15.509659
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
The trial court did not err by honoring the Arizona judgment. In this instance, the law does not require plaintiff Bankers Equipment to enforce its contract by a contract action in Georgia. This court has drawn too narrowly the picture of the transaction involved here, which in its composite involved three parties. The issue below was whether the Arizona court had personal jurisdiction over the Georgia corporation.
1. Before addressing that issue, a procedural point should be made because the majority cites Signet Bank/Virginia v. Tillis, 196 Ga. App. 433 (396 SE2d 54) (1990). There, the challenge to the foreign court’s lack of personal jurisdiction was asserted in a defensive “answer” to the domestication filing, thus purportedly treating the domestication as an entirely new action in the Georgia court. This was improper procedure. “The Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Law is a summary procedure for endowing a filed foreign judgment with the ‘same effect’ as a judgment of the court in which it is filed.” Hammette v. Eickemeyer, 203 Ga. App. 243 (416 SE2d 824) (1992). Any litigation ensuing is limited to that which is afforded any other Georgia judgment. OCGA § 9-12-132. The course followed in Signet Bank is “inconsistent with the summary nature of the uniform law and the purpose of the law, which is to expedite the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.” Id. at 244.
*556The train in Signet Bank left the track and traveled erroneously to a motion for summary judgment, which is obviously not available after there is a judgment. Summary judgment is authorized only when seeking recovery on a claim, counterclaim, cross-claim or a declaratory judgment. OCGA § 9-11-56 (a). As said in Sanders v. S. D. Leasing, 189 Ga. App. 409, 410 (376 SE2d 420) (1988), “unless a judgment is void on its face [so as to be subject to collateral attack pursuant to OCGA § 9-11-60 (a)], it must be attacked by direct proceeding by motion for new trial or motion to set aside. . . .” Until the complaint in equity was discontinued, OCGA § 9-11-60 (e), it was a method for direct attack. See Logan v. Nunnelly, 128 Ga. App. 43, 46 (195 SE2d 659) (1973). Now only OCGA § 9-11-60 (b) is available to remedy a voidable domesticated judgment.
Because the parties and the trial court, as well as this court, treated the domestication in Signet Bank as a new action, this court erroneously reached the issue of the foreign court’s jurisdiction over defendant Tillis. As was done in Sanders, this court should have ruled that Tillis failed to attack the domesticated judgment properly and thus ended its analysis. The federal full faith and credit clause, (United States Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. I), and the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Law which implements it, are frustrated where two successive suits, in two different states, are allowed; one is deemed sufficient. The judgment debtor’s state must either enforce the judgment as a judgment or, for some legal reason, refuse to do so. It is not to conduct a second lawsuit proceeding on the foreign judgment.
Eastlawn pursued the proper method for challenging jurisdiction by attacking the foreign judgment through a motion to set it aside. OCGA § 9-11-60 (b).
2. Eastlawn enumerates as error that the order below is fatally flawed because it is based on an erroneous finding of fact.
In assessing Eastlawn’s contacts with the State of Arizona, the court found that Sue Hornsby (then wife of Eastlawn’s secretary-treasurer) was in Arizona for Eastlawn with respect to the lease equipment at a time when she was an officer of the corporation. The evidence actually showed that Ms. Hornsby was an officer of the corporation for a short time in the year after her visit to Arizona. However, she made the trip at the request of Eastlawn’s officer to accompany its employee for training on the CSII equipment, and the corporation paid at least some expenses for their trip. Whether or not Ms. Hornsby was an officer at the time of her visit is not significant as she was clearly acting as agent of the corporation. The misstatement of fact is not fatal to the trial court’s conclusions.
3. The domesticated judgment is presumed binding and the foreign court’s jurisdiction is presumed unless and until it is proved oth*557erwise; the burden is on the party asserting invalidity to show it. Patterson v. Patterson, 208 Ga. 7, 10, 11 (64 SE2d 441) (1951); Logan v. Nunnelly, supra at 45. In Patterson, it was clearly stated: “The trial court in this case was under a duty to accord prima facie validity to the [foreign] decree. . . .” The same duty rested here.
Eastlawn’s first enumeration of error is that the court below failed to apply Arizona law. Since it is the Arizona judgment which is being challenged for lack of personal jurisdiction, it should be measured first by Arizona’s jurisdictional standards. However, Eastlawn did not raise the ground of non-adherence to Arizona law in its motion to set aside nor in its memorandum in support of the motion. It relied solely on the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution and case law applying it to long-arm jurisdiction. It raised the ground in oral argument, apparently in response to the statement of Bankers Equipment (in its memorandum opposing the motion) that Arizona law applied and was shown on the Arizona judgment to have been proven and applied. However, Eastlawn did not obtain a ruling on this ground. The trial court ruled only on the federal constitutional question and concluded that federal due process was complied with. Whether the Arizona court’s jurisdiction over Eastlawn comported with Arizona law is not before us, not having been both raised and ruled on below. Thomas v. State, 203 Ga. App. 529, 530 (1) (417 SE2d 353) (1992), and cases cited therein.
4. The final enumeration, which gets to the heart of the matter and the point of dissent, is that jurisdiction was not satisfied under the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution.
“[T]he constitutional touchstone [is] whether the defendant purposefully established ‘minimum contacts’ in the forum State . . . ‘[that is, whether] the defendant’s conduct and connection with the forum State are such that he should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there.’ [Cit.]” Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U. S. 462, 474 (105 SC 2174, 85 LE2d 528) (1985). In making this determination, we must evaluate prior negotiations, contemplated future consequences, the terms of the contract, and the parties’ actual course of dealing. Id. at 479.
Eastlawn’s secretary-treasurer, Clifford Hornsby, initiated contact with CSII, an Arizona corporation which supplies computer software to the cemetery business. He did so at a business convention in Florida when he “filled out a card authorizing CSII representatives to come to Eastlawn Memorial Gardens.” Hornsby, on behalf of Eastlawn, subsequently decided he wanted the CSII products for its operation in Georgia.
Acting both on behalf of Eastlawn and in his individual capacity, he entered into a 60-month lease for the computer equipment, which consisted of CSII’s software plus various computer hardware, with ap*558pellee Bankers Equipment, another Arizona corporation. This was by choice, as there is no evidence or contention that Bankers Equipment was the only potential lessor. The lease culminated the negotiations and caused Bankers Equipment to purchase in excess of $26,000 worth of computer equipment selected by Eastlawn for its benefit and use from an Arizona vendor chosen by Eastlawn. CSII was the vendor for all of it. By the lease, Eastlawn prompted the Arizona leasing company to pay the Arizona vendor (“we approve payment by you to the vendor”). It agreed to lease the equipment from the Arizona company, and it agreed to make monthly payments to the Arizona company for five years with the right to purchase it if it so chose.
Sue and Wendy Hornsby went to Arizona as Eastlawn’s agents for a week (Monday to Saturday) at the corporation’s expense for the latter to receive computer training at CSII. During this period Clifford Hornsby signed the lease. He also spent a week at CSII in Arizona later to receive computer training and resolve problems with the use of the computer. Eastlawn also caused the CSII technician to travel to Georgia to train another employee on the equipment. Eastlawn mailed monthly payments to Bankers Equipment in Arizona for over a year and then defaulted by discontinuing them.
Significantly, the lease also contained a provision under which the agreement is “deemed to have been made and executed in Maricopa County, Arizona,” and a choice of law provision that the agreement “shall be interpreted and the rights and liabilities of the parties hereto determined in accordance with the laws of the State of Arizona.”
Eastlawn knowingly entered into a contract not only with a choice of law provision, agreeing to be bound by Arizona law. It also agreed that for the purpose of the construction and enforcement of the contract, it was made and executed in Arizona as a matter of fact. This is much more than merely contracting with an out-of-state party, which alone does not establish minimum contacts for federal constitutional purposes. Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, supra at 479.
Eastlawn’s connections with the State of Arizona involving the subject of the contract were such that it should reasonably be expected to appear there to defend an action based on the alleged failure to perform its contractual obligations. Considering all the relevant factors designated in Burger King, the action in Arizona met the minimal contacts requirement for personal jurisdiction. In Signet Bank, supra, the only contact was the mailing of an application for a credit card and subsequent payments to the forum state. There was not, for example, an express provision in the contract designating the foreign state as the place of making.
The Arizona court’s jurisdiction over appellant did not oifend the *559Fourteenth Amendment due process clause and thus its judgment is entitled to full faith and credit. OCGA § 9-12-131. The trial court properly refused to set aside the domesticated judgment.
Decided December 3, 1993
Reconsideration denied December 20, 1993
Chambers, Chambers & Chambers, Timothy D. Chambers, for appellant.
Crumbley & Crumbley, James T. Chafin III, for appellee.
I am authorized to state that Judge Blackburn joins in this dissent.