## Facts

- Evans Cabinet Corp., a Georgia cabinetry manufacturer, contracted in 2004 to supply cabinetry for Kitchen International’s residential construction projects on the U.S. East Coast.
- Kitchen placed orders from its Montréal headquarters to Evans’s Georgia office; cabinetry was shipped from Georgia directly to U.S. job sites.
- Kitchen asserted a separate 2004 agreement to create a Montréal showroom and claimed Evans approved the showroom design and shipped cabinetry and promotional materials to Québec; Evans denied any showroom agreement or Québec shipments for that purpose.
- After disputes about product quality/conformity, Kitchen sued Evans in the Superior Court of Québec for breach of contract; Evans was served but did not appear, and a default money judgment entered against Evans.
- Evans later sued Kitchen in federal court (diversity) for breach of contract and quantum meruit arising from the supply relationship; Kitchen sought dismissal based on claim preclusion from the Québec judgment.

## Issues

1. Whether the Québec default judgment could be recognized and given claim-preclusive effect in Massachusetts federal court when Evans challenged the Québec court’s personal jurisdiction.
2. Whether disputed facts about Evans’s alleged Québec-related activities (including the alleged showroom) precluded summary judgment on recognition.
3. Whether recognition required not only sufficient contacts but also an independent determination that Québec’s exercise of jurisdiction was fair and reasonable.

## Decision

- The First Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for Kitchen and remanded.
- The court held that the record contained genuine disputes of material fact regarding Evans’s contacts with Québec, making summary judgment improper.
- The court held that the district court’s jurisdiction/recognition analysis was incomplete because it addressed contacts but did not evaluate whether asserting jurisdiction was fair and reasonable.
- Because recognition of the foreign judgment was unresolved, claim preclusion could not be applied as a matter of law on the existing record.

## Legal Principles

- A foreign-country money judgment is not entitled to recognition (and thus cannot support claim preclusion) if the rendering court lacked personal jurisdiction under the recognition forum’s standards.
- Personal jurisdiction for recognition purposes requires both: (1) sufficient forum-related contacts and (2) a separate assessment of fairness/reasonableness comparable to “fair play and substantial justice.”
- When a court considers materials outside the pleadings on a motion to dismiss, conversion to summary judgment requires compliance with Rule 56, including denial of summary judgment where genuine disputes of material fact exist.
- Credibility-dependent disputes about the defendant’s purposeful activities in the foreign forum are material to both the contacts inquiry and the fairness inquiry and generally cannot be resolved on summary judgment.

## Conclusion

The First Circuit held that recognition of the Québec default judgment could not be decided on summary judgment because material factual disputes remained about Evans’s Québec contacts and because the district court failed to conduct the required fairness analysis; without recognition, the judgment could not bar Evans’s federal claims by claim preclusion.


Evans Cabinet Corp. v. Kitchen Int'l, Inc., 593 F.3d 135 (1st Cir. 2010)