Woo v. Spackman

United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit
No. 20-1527
SANG CHEOL WOO,
Plaintiff, Appellant,
v.
CHARLES C. SPACKMAN,
Defendant,
SO-HEE KIM,
Movant, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
[Hon. Allison D. Burroughs, U.S. District Judge]
Before
Kayatta, Selya, and Barron,
Circuit Judges.
Darryl Stein, with whom John Han and Kobre & Kim LLP were on
brief, for appellant.
Douglas S. Brooks, with whom Joseph B. Hernandez and
LibbyHoopes, P.C. were on brief, for appellee.
February 12, 2021
SELYA, Circuit Judge. This appeal requires us, as a
matter of first impression in this circuit, to explore the scope
and reach of 28 U.S.C. § 1963 — a statute that permits the
registration of certain judgments in a federal district court.
Concluding that the New York state-court judgment proffered by the
appellant does not come within the statutory sweep and that no
other cognizable basis for federal subject-matter jurisdiction has
been shown, we affirm both the district court's order of dismissal
and its denial of reconsideration.
I. BACKGROUND
The threshold questions that we must resolve pertain to
the jurisdiction of the district court to register a state-court
judgment. Even so, we find it useful to start with an overview of
the history and travel of the case.
The protagonists in the underlying controversy are
plaintiff-appellant Sang Cheol Woo (Woo) and defendant Charles C.
Spackman (Spackman). Woo accused Spackman of a violation of Korean
securities laws, occurring nearly two decades ago, in connection
with Woo's ownership of shares in a company, publicly listed in
Korea, that Spackman controlled. Woo alleges that Spackman, acting
as chief executive officer of the Korean company, engaged in a
"self-dealing merger." In that merger, the Korean company acquired
another entity that Spackman owned. Spackman profited handsomely,
Woo alleges, even though the stock price of the Korean company
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plummeted when it was ascertained that the acquired firm had scant
value.
In the wake of this debacle, Woo and other investors
sued Spackman in a Korean court for violations of Korean securities
laws. After years of litigation, the Supreme Court of Korea in
October of 2013 affirmed a judgment in favor of Woo and other
investors for approximately $4.5 million. Spackman struggled to
obtain relief from this judgment, but his final hope for a retrial
was dashed by the Supreme Court of Korea in May of 2018.
Unable to collect any money from Spackman in Korea, Woo
sought recognition of the Korean judgment in New York. See N.Y.
C.P.L.R. §§ 5301-5309 ("Uniform Foreign Country Money-Judgments
Recognition Act"). In September of 2018, a New York court
recognized the Korean judgment and entered a judgment in Woo's
favor for more than $13 million — a figure that included the
original Korean judgment amount of approximately $4.5 million plus
accrued interest at the rate of nine percent per annum — together
with pro-rated interest for the year 2018. By this time, Spackman
no longer challenged the finality of the Korean judgment.
Like its Korean predecessor, the New York judgment went
unpaid. Seeking satisfaction, Woo repaired to the United States
District Court for the District of Massachusetts and filed the New
York judgment electronically on December 21, 2018, captioning that
filing as a "Registration of State Court Judgment". It consisted
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solely of the decision and order of the New York court. Woo then
served multiple subpoenas on Spackman's wife, movant-appellee So-
Hee Kim (Kim), in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seeking deposition
testimony and other discovery. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 45. Woo
asserted that Kim had intimate knowledge of Spackman's financial
holdings in the United States and that she and Spackman maintained
a shared residence in Massachusetts within the territorial limits
of the district court's subpoena power. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 45(c).
Kim moved to quash, arguing (among other things) that the district
court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over the underlying
matter because the registration statute upon which Woo relied, 28
U.S.C. § 1963, only authorized district courts to register
judgments of other federal courts. Woo opposed the motion to
quash.
The district court concluded that section 1963 did not
authorize the registration of state-court judgments and that,
therefore, it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction. See Woo v.
Spackman (Woo I), 2019 WL 6715134, at *1 (D. Mass. Dec. 10, 2019).
The court expressed the view that this conclusion aligned it with
the weight of authority elsewhere. See id. at *2-3. Accordingly,
it dismissed the matter for want of subject-matter jurisdiction
and dispensed with other pending motions (including Kim's motion
to quash) as moot. See id. at *3.
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Woo moved to reconsider, suggesting for the first time
that federal subject-matter jurisdiction might exist by reason of
diversity of citizenship and amount in controversy. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 1332(a). The district court denied this motion. See Woo v.
Spackman (Woo II), 2020 WL 1939692, at *1 (D. Mass. Apr. 22, 2020).
This timely appeal followed. In it, Woo challenges both
the district court's order of dismissal and its denial of
reconsideration.1
II. ANALYSIS
On appeal, Woo advances a gallimaufry of arguments. We
first consider his argument that section 1963 is itself a source
of federal jurisdiction because — in his view — it authorizes a
federal court to register a state-court judgment. We then consider
Woo's remaining arguments, each of which suggests that the district
court possessed some alternate basis for subject-matter
jurisdiction.2
A. Registration Under 28 U.S.C. § 1963.
Woo's principal argument is that 28 U.S.C. § 1963permits a district court to register a state-court judgment. This
Spackman was not served below, and he has not filed a brief
1
on appeal.
In the district court, Woo also argued that the New York
2
judgment was entitled to full faith and credit in federal court,
see 28 U.S.C. § 1738, and that federal jurisdiction could be
premised on this circumstance. This argument has not been renewed
on appeal and, thus, we deem it abandoned. See United States v.
Zannino, 895 F.2d 1, 17 (1st Cir. 1990).
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argument gives rise to a question of law regarding the district
court's subject-matter jurisdiction and, thus, engenders de novo
review. See Fothergill v. United States, 566 F.3d 248, 251 (1st
Cir. 2009).
By its terms, 28 U.S.C. § 1963 authorizes federal courts
to register certain judgments entered by certain other courts.
The relevant text provides:
A judgment in an action for the recovery of
money or property entered in any court of
appeals, district court, bankruptcy court, or
in the Court of International Trade may be
registered by filing a certified copy of the
judgment in any other district or, with
respect to the Court of International Trade,
in any judicial district, when the judgment
has become final . . . .
28 U.S.C. § 1963. Our task, then, is to determine whether "[a]
judgment . . . in any court of appeals, district court, bankruptcy
court, or in the Court of International Trade" encompasses
judgments entered by state courts.
In making this determination, we do not write on a blank
slate. Three of the four courts of appeals that have addressed
the issue directly have held that the reach of section 1963 does
not extend that far. See Caballero v. Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia, 945 F.3d 1270, 1274 (10th Cir. 2019);
Mobil Cerro Negro, Ltd. v. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, 863
F.3d 96, 122-23 (2d Cir. 2017); Fox Painting Co. v. NLRB, 16 F.3d
115, 117 (6th Cir. 1994). And the fourth such court, while less
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definitive, has not held to the contrary. See GE Betz, Inc. v.
Zee Co., 718 F.3d 615, 625 (7th Cir. 2013).
Against this backdrop, we begin our inquiry with first
principles. Statutory interpretation ought to start with the
statutory text. See Plumley v. S. Container, Inc., 303 F.3d 364,
369 (1st Cir. 2002). As a general matter, moreover, courts should
strive to interpret statutes so that each word in the statutory
text has meaning. See Gustafson v. Alloyd Co., 513 U.S. 561, 574
(1995); Akebia Therapeutics, Inc. v. Azar, 976 F.3d 86, 94 (1st
Cir. 2020).
The text of section 1963 states that a judgment from a
rendering court may be registered in "any other district or, with
respect to the Court of International Trade, in any judicial
district." 28 U.S.C. § 1963 (emphasis supplied). Read in context,
Congress's use of the word "other" strongly suggests that the
rendering court and the registering court must be part of the same
family of courts. It is clear beyond peradventure that section
1963 identifies only federal courts as registering courts, and we
think it follows that the rendering court must be a federal court
as well. To hold otherwise would be to ignore Congress's carefully
chosen wording. After all, if Congress had intended the statute
to include judgments originating in state courts, it would make no
sense to refer to the registering court as "any other district."
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The overall contours of the statutory text are
consistent with this view. Congress twice amended the statute's
list of rendering courts over the last few decades, see 28 U.S.C.
§ 1963 (1988); id. § 1963 (1996), but on each occasion it specified
particular federal courts that could serve as rendering courts.
If Congress had wanted section 1963 to apply to all courts (federal
and state), there would have been no need for it to enumerate
particular federal courts from which a judgment could emanate.
Reading section 1963 to encompass both federal and state courts as
rendering courts would make the statute's enumeration of
particular federal courts superfluous — and it is apodictic that
we should avoid, when possible, interpretations of a statute that
will render words in the statutory text superfluous. See Nat'l
Ass'n of Mfrs. v. Dep't of Def., 138 S. Ct. 617, 632 (2018); City
of Providence v. Barr, 954 F.3d 23, 37 (1st Cir. 2020).
There is more. The courts listed in the statute as
possible originators of the underlying judgment track the
constituent courts that, in the aggregate, comprise virtually the
whole of the federal judicial system. Although Woo notes that
certain states have "court[s] of appeal[s]" and "district
court[s]," many states do not. We think it outlandish to suggest
that Congress intended to make the availability of section 1963's
registration procedure dependent upon the nomenclature that a
state happens to assign to its courts, and we do not read section
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1963 as accomplishing so curious a result. Cf. Inmates of Suffolk
Cnty. Jail v. Rouse, 129 F.3d 649, 655 (1st Cir. 1997) (recognizing
that courts should avoid statutory interpretations that produce
"bizarre" results).
Swimming upstream, Woo attempts to rely on the Seventh
Circuit's decision in GE Betz as authority for the proposition
that section 1963 authorizes a federal court to register a state-
court judgment. As we explain below, his reliance is misplaced.
In GE Betz, the court considered a case in which the
plaintiff sought to register a state-court judgment in another
state. See 718 F.3d at 617. The defendant removed the case to
federal court, alleging that the requirements for removal under 28
U.S.C. § 1441 (including the existence of diversity jurisdiction)
were satisfied. See id. at 618. The plaintiff objected to the
removal and sought a remand, contending that removal was improper
because section 1963 barred federal courts from registering state-
court judgments. See id. at 623.
The Seventh Circuit addressed only a narrow issue as to
whether section 1963 prohibits federal courts from registering and
enforcing state-court judgments (even where alternate grounds for
federal jurisdiction exist). See id. at 624-25. The court
concluded that "§ 1963 does not prohibit the removal of all matters
related to the registration of state-court judgments." Id. at
625. It added that a federal court may enforce a state-court
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judgment if "other requirements for federal jurisdiction" are met.
Id. at 624.
Contrary to Woo's importunings, the GE Betz court did
not hold that section 1963 itself authorized federal courts to
register state-court judgments. Although the court described the
statute as "ambiguous" and "not clear," id., it decided only that
section 1963 did not bar the registration of state-court judgments
where another basis for jurisdiction was manifest, see id. at 625.
The court went on to examine alternate jurisdictional theories —
a necessary corollary of its conclusion that section 1963 itself
does not authorize the registration of a state-court judgment in
a federal district court. See id.
That ends this aspect of the matter. We hold that
section 1963 says what it means and means what it says. We thus
conclude that section 1963 does not, in and of itself, authorize
federal courts to register state-court judgments. Even so, we
recognize — as did the Seventh Circuit in GE Betz, see id. — that
section 1963 does not foreclose other avenues for enforcing a
state-court judgment in federal court where some independent basis
for federal jurisdiction exists.3 Thus, we turn to Woo's claim
that there are independent grounds for federal jurisdiction here.
3 The statute itself makes this clear: section 1963 states,
in relevant part, that "[t]he procedure prescribed under this
section is in addition to other procedures provided by law for the
enforcement of judgments." Nothing in the statutory text (or
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B. Alternate Grounds for Jurisdiction.
With respect to alternate grounds for federal
jurisdiction, Woo chiefly argues that the district court had
jurisdiction by reason of diverse citizenship and the existence of
a controversy in the requisite amount. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).
This argument, however, faces a high hurdle: prior to the district
court's entry of its order of dismissal, Woo never so much as
hinted at the presence of diversity jurisdiction. Instead, Woo
surfaced his diversity-of-citizenship theory for the first time in
his motion for reconsideration.
We assay "the denial of a motion for reconsideration for
abuse of discretion." Caribbean Mgmt. Grp. v. Erikon LLC, 966
F.3d 35, 44 (1st Cir. 2020). In general terms, such a motion is
a vehicle for a party either to bring forth previously unavailable
evidence or to show "that the original judgment was premised on a
manifest error of law or fact." Id. at 44-45 (quoting Ira Green,
Inc. v. Mil. Sales & Serv. Co., 775 F.3d 12, 28 (1st Cir. 2014)).
Woo's motion for reconsideration, though, did not satisfy either
of these criteria. In it, he pointed to no newly discovered
evidence previously unavailable to him; nor did he identify any
mistake of law or fact purportedly infecting the district court's
elsewhere, for that matter) indicates that section 1963 shuts the
federal court's doors to other possible mechanisms for enforcement
of a state-court judgment.
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order of dismissal. As relevant here, the motion sought to
advance, for the first time, a new and previously unmentioned
theory of jurisdiction — a theory that had been available to Woo
all along.
Woo's attempt to shoehorn a new and previously available
theory into a motion for reconsideration distorts the office of
such a motion. At the same time, the absence of any pleaded
jurisdictional facts runs counter to the principle that "[f]ederal
courts are courts of limited jurisdiction." Kokkonen v. Guardian
Life Ins. Co. of Am., 511 U.S. 375, 377 (1994); see In re Olympic
Mills Corp., 477 F.3d 1, 6 (1st Cir. 2007). Given this principle,
it is irrefragable that the burden of establishing jurisdiction
must fall to the party who asserts it. See Kokkonen, 511 U.S. at
377; Aversa v. United States, 99 F.3d 1200, 1209 (1st Cir. 1996).
Thus, we have held that a party asserting the existence of
diversity jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1332 must allege facts
sufficient to show that the requirements for such jurisdiction are
satisfied in the particular case. See, e.g., Bearbones, Inc. v.
Peerless Indem. Ins. Co., 936 F.3d 12, 15 (1st Cir. 2019); Harrison
v. Granite Bay Care, Inc., 811 F.3d 36, 40-41 (1st Cir. 2016); see
also Kale v. Combined Ins. Co. of Am., 924 F.2d 1161, 1163 n.1
(1st Cir. 1991) (holding bare reference to 28 U.S.C. § 1332 in
string citation not enough to make out claim of diversity
jurisdiction).
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Woo made no such allegations here. His initial filing
in the district court contained no allegations at all concerning
the parties' citizenship,4 nor did he even mention — in any
pleading, memorandum, or other document served prior to his motion
for reconsideration — the possibility that diversity jurisdiction
might exist. Thereafter, Woo made two filings in response to Kim's
motion to quash, but neither filing contained either an assertion
that diversity jurisdiction existed or facts adumbrating the
existence of such jurisdiction. Woo's second reply is especially
telling because — after Kim had raised the specter of a
jurisdictional defect — Woo expounded on other possible
jurisdictional theories but did not mention the possibility of
diversity jurisdiction.
Woo did, of course, refer to diversity of citizenship in
his motion for reconsideration. Here, however, that was too late.
"A motion for reconsideration is not the venue to undo procedural
snafus or permit a party to advance arguments [he] should have
developed prior to judgment." Biltcliffe v. CitiMortgage, Inc.,
772 F.3d 925, 930 (1st Cir. 2014). As we have explained, when a
plaintiff fails properly to develop a theory in his filings prior
Woo's initial fourteen-page filing consisted solely of the
4
New York court decision and order. Those documents contained no
assertions concerning the parties' citizenship. Nor did Woo at
any point either amend or move to amend his initial filing to
include that information.
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to dismissal of his action, there can be "no abuse of discretion
in the district court's refusal to address that theory on a motion
for reconsideration." Iverson v. City of Boston, 452 F.3d 94, 104
(1st Cir. 2006); see Caribbean Mgmt., 966 F.3d at 45 ("[I]t is
settled beyond hope of contradiction that, at least in the absence
of exceptional circumstances, a party may not advance new arguments
in a motion for reconsideration when such arguments could and
should have been advanced at an earlier stage of the litigation.").
So it is here.
Little more need be said.5 Jurisdiction is the
cornerstone of every federal court action, and "jurisdictional
facts ought to be gathered and assessed before an action is
commenced." Bearbones, 936 F.3d at 16. It follows, as night
follows day, that the district court's rejection of Woo's belated
effort to switch jurisdictional horses midstream was well within
the compass of its discretion.
Woo has another arrow in his quiver. He argues that the
district court could have exercised jurisdiction to register the
judgment simply by availing itself of Massachusetts law. In
support, he points to a pair of Massachusetts statutes which, he
says, provide authority for the district court to register the New
5 Given our conclusion, we need not reach Kim's argument that
even if the citizenship and amount-in-controversy requirements
were met, Woo's attempted registration of the state-court judgment
does not constitute a "civil action[]" under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a).
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York judgment. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 218 § 4A ("Massachusetts
Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act"); id. ch. 235 § 14(a)
("Executions in actions on judgments").6
This argument is futile. To begin, chapter 218, § 4A
was not even in effect at the time Woo attempted to register his
state-court judgment in the district court. Woo attempted to
register the judgment by filing it on December 21, 2018. But
chapter 218, § 4A did not take effect until April 1, 2019.
In all events, there is an even more fundamental flaw in
Woo's argument. The availability of state enforcement mechanisms
in this case is dependent upon the antecedent establishment of
federal jurisdiction (by, say, the proper registration of an
underlying judgment or pleading facts sufficient to satisfy the
requirements of the diversity statute). See Fed. R. Civ. P. 69(a);
Burgos-Yantín v. Mun. of Juana Díaz, 909 F.3d 1, 8-9 (1st Cir.
2018) (per curiam); see also 12 Charles Alan Wright & Arthur R.
Miller, Federal Practice and Procedure § 3011 (3d ed. 2014 & Supp.
2020). A putative plaintiff cannot unlock the door to a federal
forum merely because some state remedial mechanism would seem to
suit his purposes. See U.S.I. Props. Corp. v. M.D. Constr. Co.,
6 The first of these state statutes, chapter 218, § 4A,
describes the circumstances in which a Massachusetts court may
register a foreign judgment. The second of these state statutes,
chapter 235, § 14(a), requires that a plaintiff deliver a copy of
a foreign judgment to the registering court.
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230 F.3d 489, 498 n.8 (1st Cir. 2000) ("Nor is it sufficient to
rely on the incorporation of state procedures in Rule 69(a) to
establish federal enforcement jurisdiction.") An independent
showing of federal jurisdiction is a sine qua non to the use of
such state-law mechanisms in a federal court. Indeed, Woo's brief
seems to acknowledge that Massachusetts procedures would be
available only after the requirements for diversity jurisdiction
have been satisfied. Given our conclusion that Woo has not
successfully invoked the district court's diversity jurisdiction,
see text supra, the district court had no way to avail itself of
Massachusetts law in order to register the New York state-court
judgment.
We add a coda. It is of no consequence that Woo
identifies what he describes as "more than 70 state-court
judgments" that district courts sitting in the District of
Massachusetts have previously enforced. There is no indication
that jurisdiction was contested in any of those cases and, thus,
they have no precedential force. So, too, the cases that Woo cites
in an effort to demonstrate that federal courts "repeatedly"
enforce foreign judgments under state law are inapposite. In each
of them, the resort to state procedures coincided with the
existence of federal jurisdiction. See, e.g., Wright v. Bank of
Am., N.A., 517 F. App'x 304, 306 (6th Cir. 2013) (affirming
district court's enforcement of state-court judgment while sitting
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in diversity); Endocare, Inc. v. Technologias Urologicas, Inc.,
950 F. Supp. 2d 341, 344 (D.P.R. 2013) (explaining that district
court has authority to enforce state-court judgment while
exercising diversity jurisdiction).
To say more would be to paint the lily. We conclude
that, in the circumstances at hand, Woo's alternate grounds for
jurisdiction cannot rescue his case.
III. CONCLUSION
We need go no further. For the reasons elucidated above,
the district court's order of dismissal for want of subject-matter
jurisdiction and its denial of Woo's motion for reconsideration
are both
Affirmed.
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