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
