Introduction
Traditional conflicts of law rules regarded limitation as a
matter of procedure that would be governed by the lex fori., i.e.,
by local law. This was the stated private international law
position as declared by several judgements of the Indian
courts.
The recent Supreme Court judgment in Bank of Baroda v/s Kotak
Bank Ltd, has broken new ground by characterizing limitation as a
substantive requirement as opposed to being merely procedural . The
upshot is that the period of limitation for enforcement of a
foreign judgement in a reciprocating territory is now no longer
determined by Indian law but instead depends on the law of
limitation of the foreign forum.
The Appellant, i.e. Bank of Baroda, commenced proceedings
against the predecessor of Kotak (Vyasa Bank) on 19.04.1993 in
London on a dispute relating to a letter of credit. Bank of
Baroda's action was decreed by the High Court of London for an
amount of US $ 1,267,909.26 along with interest. The
