On 8 May 2020, Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court in Sichuan Province of China (hereinafter “the Chengdu Court”) rendered a ruling to dismiss the application for recognizing and enforcing a civil judgment made by a United Arab Emirates court, due to translation errors in the Chinese version of the application.
Please click here, for the full text of the court decision in Chen Shijun (or Middle East Formwork Scaffold Company) v. China Metallurgical Chenggong Construction Co. Ltd. (2018) Chuan 01 Xie Wai Ren No.3 ((2018)川01协外认3号).
I. Case Overview
The applicant Chen Shijun(陈士俊) (or the Middle East Formwork Scaffold Company) (中东模板脚手架公司) is domiciled in the Emirate of Sharjah, UAE. The respondent is China Metallurgical Chenggong Construction Co. Ltd.(中冶成工建设有限公司), domiciled in Chengdu, China.
The applicant and respondent had a dispute over a lease contract. The Dubai Court of the United Arab Emirates issued the Commercial Judgment No. 255 of 2016 (the “UAE Judgment”) on the dispute.
Afterward, the applicant applied to the Chengdu Court for the recognition and enforcement of the UAE Judgment.
On 14 June 2018, the Chengdu Court accepted the application.
The Chengdu court pointed out that the applicants in the application had both “Chen Shijun” and “Middle East Formwork Scaffold Company”; and in the Chinese translation of the UAE litigation materials submitted by the applicant, one of the materials recorded the defendant as “China Metallurgical Chenggong Shanghai Wuye Construction Co., Ltd., and the other recorded defendant was “China Metallurgical Chenggong Construction Co., Ltd., Dubai Branch”.
Chengdu Court indicated that it could not identify the parties in the case according to the material submitted by the applicant.
For this reason, the Chengdu court requested the applicant to submit additional materials and an accurate Chinese translation of the UAE judgment, which the applicant failed to provide.
On 8 May 2020, the Chengdu Court rendered a ruling to dismiss the application.
II. Our Comments
As we discussed in an earlier post about the Chenzhou Court refusing to recognize a Myanmar judgment, if a Chinese court dismisses the application on the ground of lack of appropriate application documents, the applicant could still file a lawsuit before a Chinese court or re-apply after he is well-prepared. The applicant in this case may still have these options.
The case also shows the importance of application documents and their translation. We will provide a list of documents for the application of enforcing foreign judgments in the near future for your reference.
Contributors: Guodong Du 杜国栋 , Meng Yu 余萌
