## Facts

- Intercontinental Hotels Corporation (Puerto Rico) operated a government-licensed, regulated gambling casino in Puerto Rico.
- Jack Golden, a New York resident, gambled at the casino and incurred losses.
- Golden delivered a $12,000 check and IOUs to Intercontinental in payment of the gambling debt.
- The obligations were validly contracted in Puerto Rico, and Puerto Rican law provided a judicial remedy to enforce such casino debts.
- Intercontinental sued in New York to recover the $12,000.

## Issues

1. Whether New York courts must refuse to enforce a gambling debt that is valid and judicially enforceable where incurred (Puerto Rico) because similar gambling obligations are generally unenforceable under New York law as a matter of public policy.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals reversed the Appellate Division and reinstated the trial court’s judgment for Intercontinental.
- The court held that New York should enforce the Puerto Rico gambling debt because it was valid where made and enforcement in New York did not offend New York’s public policy under the governing standard.

## Legal Principles

- A forum generally enforces a right validly created under foreign law; refusal on public-policy grounds is limited to exceptional cases.
- Under the public-policy exception, enforcement may be denied only upon a clear showing that enforcing the foreign right would “offend our sense of justice or menace the public welfare.”
- Public policy, for conflicts purposes, is not triggered merely because the forum would not create the same right; it requires that judicial enforcement would amount to approval of a transaction that is “inherently vicious, wicked or immoral” and shocking to the prevailing moral sense.
- Regulated, government-licensed gambling that is lawful and enforceable where conducted does not, without more, satisfy the public-policy threshold barring enforcement in New York.

## Conclusion

New York enforced a Puerto Rico casino debt because the obligation was lawful and enforceable where incurred and did not meet the narrow, high threshold for denying enforcement on forum public-policy grounds.


Intercontinental Hotels Corp. (P.R.) v. Golden, 15 N.Y.2d 9, 254 N.Y.S.2d 527, 203 N.E.2d 210 (1964)