Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 22.pdf/645

 A Lawsuit in Mexico which then severally must go the rounds of authentication, notarial, con sular, and ministerial, in the United States and Mexico, and costing much time and fees. This Gordian diﬁiculty was averted by the simple expedient of causing all the notes to be indorsed in due form to myself, who, being thus the legal owner of them, and present

in the forum, suing in propn'a persona, needed no such credentials. Another ﬁne point of Mexican law now

protruded

itself,

and

this

time

could not be gotten around. The notes, although made and payable in the United States, could not be put into suit in a court of Mexico until “vali dated" by a very liberal application of Mexican internal revenue stamps, at the rate of one tenth of one per cent,

which amounted to nearly a thousand dollars, and required a whole afternoon

States.

613

The Civil Code and Code of

Civil Procedure of Mexico, as federal enactments, apply only within the federal district and the territories; but as all the Mexican states have adopted those codes as law within their respective jurisdictions (with little or no changes), the federal codes are

practically

in

force

throughout

the

Republic,——which very much simpliﬁes the law in Mexico. Commercial suits are of two kinds, ordinary and executive, the former of which, as its name ‘implies, applies to ordinary commercial matters. It is the “executive action" which claims our interest at this time, being the course followed in the “case at bar." The code provides that "the executive proceeding may be followed when the demand is founded upon a document which bears preparatory execution,”—

in the stamp office to plaster them on the notes and cancel with the seal of

which is as nearly as I can render into

the ofﬁce.

traiga aparejada ejecucién.

This stamp tax is all but

universal to every act and document,

every sheet of paper and book of entry

in Mexico, and is the principal source of the federal revenue, after the customs

tariﬁ. In a number of particulars it is a very good form of excise and means of regulation of business. I

English the peculiar Mexican law term

What this

is may appear from the following clauses declaring what documents “bear preparatory execution," to wit: ﬁnal judgments which have become res adjudicata, and inappealable arbitral awards; “public instruments" (which are all such as are executed before a

shall have occasion to refer to it again.

notary public);

At the threshold of the case, now ready to be brought into the Second Court of First Instance, a matter of procedure of important interest presents itself, known as reconoci'miento de ﬁrma, or “acknowledgment of signature,”

by the debtor; letters of exchange, bills,

which is an admirably devised “process preliminary to suit,” as a step prepara

tory to "commercial suits.”

judicial

confessions

drafts, notes, and other commercial papers; policies of insurance; awards

of adjusters stipulated for in policies; invoices,

current

accounts,

and

all

other commercial contracts signed and judicially acknowledged by the debtor. My documents being simple notes

It may

of hand, before they could become the

be noticed here, that all commercial transactions and litigations in Mexico are covered by the Code of Commerce,

subject of the extraordinary "executive” procedure there must be the “judicial recognition of signature” by the maker. The code provides that the executive action may be prepared by requiring the

which is a federal statute exclusively in force throughout the Mexican United