Foreign Antitrust Judgments (Restriction of Enforcement) Act 1979 (Cth)

Foreign Antitrust Judgments (Restriction of Enforcement) Act 1979

No. 13 of 1979

An Act to make provision for restricting the recognition and enforcement in Australia of certain foreign judgments obtained in antitrust proceedings.

BE IT ENACTED by the Queen, and the Senate and House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia, as follows:

Short title

1. This Act may be cited as the Foreign Antitrust Judgments (Restriction of Enforcement) Act 1979.

Commencement

2. This Act shall come into operation on the day on which it receives the Royal Assent.

Certain foreign judgments in antitrust proceedings may be made wholly or partly unenforceable in Australia

3. (1) In this section—

“antitrust law” means any law of a kind commonly known as an antitrust law and includes any law having as its purpose, or as its dominant purpose, the preservation of competition between manufacturing, commercial or other business enterprises or the prevention or repression of monopolies or restrictive practices in trade or commerce;

“Australia” includes all the Territories;

“foreign court” means a court of a country outside Australia or of a part of such a country but does not include the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the exercise of jurisdiction in respect of appeals from any court in Australia;

“judgment” includes any decree or order.

(2) Where—

(a) a foreign court has, whether before or after the commencement of this Act, given a judgment in proceedings instituted under an antitrust law; and

(b) the Attorney-General is satisfied that—

(i) the court, in giving that judgment, exercised jurisdiction or powers of a kind or in a manner inconsistent with international law or comity and the recognition or enforcement of the judgment in Australia would or might be detrimental to, or adversely affect, trade or commerce with other countries, the trading operations of a trading or financial corporation formed within the limits of the Commonwealth or any other matters with respect to which the Parliament has power to make laws or to which the executive powers of the Commonwealth relate; or

(ii) it is desirable for the purpose of protecting the national interest in relation to trade or commerce with other countries, the trading operations of trading or financial corporations formed within the limits of the Commonwealth or any other matters with respect to which the Parliament has power to make laws or to which the executive powers of the Commonwealth relate that the judgment should not be recognized or enforceable in whole or in part in Australia,

the Attorney-General may—

(c) in the case of any judgment—by order in writing, declare that the judgment shall not be recognized or enforceable in Australia; or

(d) in the case of a judgment for a specified amount of money—by order in writing, declare that, for the purposes of the recognition or enforcement of the judgment in Australia, the amount of the judgment shall be deemed to be reduced to such amount as is specified in the order, being an amount expressed in the same currency as the amount of the judgment.

   

(3) While an order in relation to a judgment is in force under sub-section (2)—

(a) in the case of an order under paragraph (2)(c)—the judgment shall not be recognized and is not enforceable in Australia; or

(b) in the case of an order under paragraph (2)(d)—the judgment may be recognized or enforced in Australia as if the amount specified in the order were substituted for the amount of the judgment, and not otherwise.

(4) Where an order is made by the Attorney-General under sub-section (2)—

(a) a copy of the order shall be published in the Gazette; and

(b) the order has effect on and from the date of publication.

(5) The provisions of section 48 (except paragraphs (1) (a) and (b) and sub-section (2)) and section 49 of the Acts Interpretation Act 1901 apply, by force of this section, to an order made under sub-section (2) of this section in like manner as those provisions apply to regulations.

(6) Nothing in the provisions applied by sub-section (5) affects the operation of an order made under sub-section (2) at any time before it becomes void, or is disallowed, in accordance with those provisions.