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Even otherwise, as pointed out earlier, in so far as the suits are concerned, the Ordinary Original Jurisdiction is exercised, based on pecuniary limits. It would be impossible to read into section 44-A that for the purpose of execution only, even though the pecuniary jurisdiction City Civil Courts is restricted, for the purpose of execution of a foreign decree it becomes the District Court in respect of those matters which fall within the Ordinary Original Civil Jurisdiction of this Court. Section 2(4) will have to be given effect. So read, the expression "District Court" for execution of foreign decrees, will be this Court in so far as its pecuniary jurisdiction is concerned. Having said so, I must reject the said contention that proceedings have not been instituted in the competent Court having jurisdiction to execute a decree.

He, however, adds that the foreign Court will not be taken as having established any fact which it has not expressly found as laid down in the judgment relied on. Short of this, not only the actual decree but every adjudicative fact is treated as conclusively decided. Rattigan in his Private International Law at p. 268 observes :

"A foreign judgment is conclusive as to any matter thereby adjudicated upon and cannot be impeached for any error either.
(1) of fact (2) or of law".

In so far as judgments in personam are concerned, any of the matters decided inter partes are binding on the parties and privies, though not on strangers. This follows from the rule now firmly grounded that a foreign judgment will be examined from the point of view of competence but not of its errors, subject of course, to there being no fraud, collusion, breach of the principles of natural justice or of public policy of England or a wrong apprehension of the law of England, if that law be involved. From the conclusiveness of foreign decrees, it may be said here that the penal laws of another country or judgments involving a penal decree are excluded. It is customary to quote Chief Justice Marshall's famous dictum in the Antelope (1824-27) 10 Wheat 66,123: 6 Law Ed. 268. "The courts of no country execute the penal laws of another." The same is the position of decrees, orders or judgments in matters of taxation and penalties under taxing laws. The America Courts follow in these respects the law in England, and Goodrich in his Conflict of Law, p. 603, sums up the American approach in one pithy sentence :