## Facts

- A Florida circuit court entered a $25,000 tort judgment for Robert D. Watkins against J. F. Conway on October 5, 1955.
- Florida allowed enforcement of domestic judgments for 20 years.
- Five years and one day after the Florida judgment, Watkins filed suit in a Georgia superior court to enforce the Florida judgment.
- Conway asserted Georgia Code § 3-701, requiring suits on out-of-state judgments to be brought within five years after the judgments are obtained.
- Georgia provided a longer limitations period for enforcement of Georgia domestic judgments than for actions on foreign judgments.
- Watkins argued that applying Georgia’s shorter limitations period to foreign judgments violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the Equal Protection Clause.

## Issues

1. Whether Georgia’s five-year limitations period for suits on foreign judgments, shorter than the period for domestic judgments, violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause or the Equal Protection Clause.
2. Whether Georgia’s construction of § 3-701—measuring the five-year period from the latest revival of the judgment in the rendering state—defeats claims of unconstitutional discrimination against foreign judgments.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia in a per curiam decision.
- The Court accepted Georgia courts’ interpretation that § 3-701 runs from the date of the latest revival of the foreign judgment, not the date of the original judgment.
- Under that interpretation, a creditor may revive the judgment in the rendering state (if revival remains available there) and then sue in Georgia within five years of the revival.
- Because Watkins could revive the judgment in Florida and then file a timely Georgia action within five years of revival, the statute’s application was not treated as discrimination against the Florida judgment.
- Watkins’s Full Faith and Credit and Equal Protection challenges were rejected on the ground that the statute, as construed, did not impose an impermissible handicap on out-of-state judgments.

## Legal Principles

- A forum state may apply a statute of limitations to actions on foreign judgments without violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause, so long as the statute is not applied in a discriminatory manner against out-of-state judgments.
- In evaluating a constitutional challenge, the Supreme Court will rely on a state court’s authoritative construction of its own limitations statute.
- A limitations rule for foreign judgments that measures the filing period from the latest revival of the judgment in the rendering state, and that permits suit when revival remains available there, is not unconstitutional discrimination under the Full Faith and Credit or Equal Protection Clauses.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Georgia’s five-year limit on suits to enforce foreign judgments because Georgia courts construed the period to run from the most recent revival in the rendering state, allowing enforcement in Georgia after revival and preventing the statute from operating as an unconstitutional discrimination against out-of-state judgment creditors.


Watkins v. Conway, 385 U.S. 188 (1966)