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Comment by escanda | Hacker News Reader

The best advice in this common mal practice is setting as base law court your jurisdiction; the farer the better.

For instance, I am in Spain and I always signed contracts based in California, etc. Badly done! Next time I will set Madrid, Spain courts as ruling law.

This way you can sue the ass off them and make them pay the money in debt and even some more to the courts.

edit: typo

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Unfortunately that will probably not do you much good. If the company is based outside of Spain all the Spanish courts can do is take their assets located in Spain which is probably nothing.

Spain is a bad example, but lots of countries have bilateral legal arrangements for this sort of thing.

As Spain is part of the EU, it should at least be good for the EU.

All assets in the EU now and for the next 1000 years.

That's an interesting statutes of limitations. 1000 years. That will outlast all governments in Europe if the past is any indicator.

It's just convenient to measure things in Reichs...

(I need a less controversial sense of humour. I should run it through chatgpt first.)

Edit: ran it through Google Gemini. Wow, I suck!

"The response "It's just convenient to measure things in Reichs.." is highly inappropriate and offensive."

Sorry my AI friends!

Doesn't that make it easier for a California company to just ignore you?

No it just means that they need to appear in your courts via a local law firm if they want to contest.

This is good advice.

Or they can just totally ignore the lawsuit with absolutely no repercussions.

An example from my experience.

Due to one of these civil law agreements.

We attained an enforceable undertaking based on the contract here.

Then we began proceedings to convert that to whatever the same thing was over there.

Which is when the other parties legal representation decided that it was a real threat and they settled.

How will the Spanish court enforce their decision abroad? I know there are agreements between te countries, but what happens practically after a decision? Who gets activated in the US to enforce the decision?

Most courts will see a contract from anywhere and enforce it (Super Generally)

Most courts will see a contract + an enforceable undertaking from the country whose laws it was signed under and see that as roughly enforceable.

Doesnt mean always.

You can take the judgement to a US court and it will be a simplied process. As long as it is a "normal" country like spain it shouldnt be a problem (if the court was say an Iranian court it might be more difficult).

Might be a pain. If they have any EU presence, it'd be easier.

Good answer and better question: Do civil law can enforce itself without bilateral agreements initiaing a claim to a foreign court? I don't think so. Even criminal couts can't without agreement.

Without agreements you go ahead and win your local case and then hope that the contract is enforceable in their country.

Thing is torts are very similar all over the place. Like if you are a former british colony your laws are usually roughly compatible. Most countries dont have a "contract was signed overseas fuckem" law. But some do.

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