§ 9-12-131.“Foreign judgment” defined

The word “foreign” does quiet work in this article, and this section heads off the reading most people would reach for first. Here, a “foreign judgment” is not a judgment from another country. It is a judgment from outside Georgia but still inside the United States legal system — a ruling Georgia’s courts already owe respect under the federal Constitution’s full faith and credit guarantee.

The definition reaches two groups of judgments. First, any judgment, decree, or order from a court of the United States — a federal court, wherever it sits, including a federal court inside Georgia. Second, any judgment from any other court entitled to full faith and credit in this state, which in practice reaches the courts of the other forty-nine states along with the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories. Nothing in the definition limits it to money judgments the way Georgia’s foreign-country recognition act limits itself — a decree or order can qualify here just as a money judgment can.

Georgia has a separate article, a few Code sections earlier in this same chapter, for judgments from courts of other nations: the Uniform Foreign-Country Money Judgments Recognition Act. That article uses “foreign” the way most people use it in conversation, to mean international. Article 6 borrows the same word for close to the opposite meaning — domestic judgments from beyond Georgia’s own borders. Skimming past this section without noticing the difference is an easy way to send a case down the wrong article.