Well, two questions:
1) If someone from the court said to Gox, "You can't allow any BTC withdrawals until the case is settled," would they comply?
That's up to gox. If they're serious about the court action it would behoove them not to piss off the judge. That wouldn't really be "freezing" as much as "complying with a court order" though. Freezing accounts basically means preventing people from being able to take their money and run. If gox was going to do that then they surely wouldn't obey the court order.
If they didn't comply with the order coinlab would go back to court to ask for contempt or another remedy but if they are ignoring the first court order odds are they aren't going to follow any further ones (this is where the "freezing" would come into play, but like I said it would be pretty hard to freeze crypto coins).
2) Is there anyone who can, or would, say that to them?
A judge/court in a jurisdiction that has the teeth to back up their order. I don't know anything about Japanese law but since gox is owned by a Japanese company I would imagine a Japanese court could take action against them. Even if they bank accounts are in another country a Japanese court could at least mess with what is in Japan (for example, cancelling their business licence or revoking their charter.. or perhaps piercing the corporate veil and allowing coinlab to take action against the personal assets of the owners of the company.
I also don't believe they're going to get anything like assets frozen before getting a judgment, unless they do something dumb like try to hide them and get caught. No court in its right mind would basically destroy a business based on a breach of contract case the other side might not even win. For one thing, seizing Gox assets would basically instantly destroy the value of the company and render it unable to pay any judgment.
Exactly - coinlab would have to make a pretty convincing case for something like the management at gox were preparing the move the assets out of the jurisdiction to frustrate judgment for the court to do something like that.
But not this part. Generally, as a matter of international comity, and pursuant to treaties to which both Japan and the United States are party, courts from one country do not act as appeals courts for those of another. So long as the proper procedure is followed, the United States and Japan will enforce a breach of contract judgment from a court in the other country.
I saw this in my googling, anyone following this particular discussion might find it interesting (I can't comment on the factual correctness of the document but at first blush it doesn't strike me as suspicious)
http://www.tomeika.jur.kyushu-u.ac.jp/procedure/Overview02_judgments.htmlHere's a snip:
A final and conclusive judgment of a foreign court shall have its effect only upon the fulfillment of the following conditions:
(i) that the foreign court would have jurisdiction pursuant to the law or treaties;
(ii) that the unsuccessful defendant received service of a summons or order as required for the commencement of proceedings (except by publication in a bulletin board at the court or by similar methods), or appeared in the action without receiving such service;
(iii) that the contents of the judgment of a foreign court and its proceeding are not contrary to the public order or good morals in Japan ;
(iv) that reciprocity is assured.
We have already discussed (i) being jurisdiction. I agree that they will be concerned about proper procedure and failure to follow that could easily result in judgment not being enforced (such as if the defendant was not properly served and didn't have a fair chance to defend themselves that wold probably qualify as in (ii) above).
However I think there are other considerations as well (which I might have mentioned earlier) which are touched on in (iii) - if the Japanese court thinks the decision is improper they are under no obligation to enforce it.
Japan, just as the United States, enforces choice of law and choice of forum provisions, and this contract has an unambiguous agreement to jurisdiction and which law applies.
Those jurisdictional choices are like waivers that try to exempt someone from gross negligence - far from bulletproof. The parties could agree that the moon was the proper jurisdiction but that doesn't mean you'd be unsuccessful bringing an application before a Japanese court. Regardless of what the parties agree vis-a-vis jurisdiction I would imagine most courts on the planet would want to satisfy themselves that they are the proper jurisdiction for any application brought before them. Sure one party could argue "hey we agreed on the USA!" but the moving party could easily say "yeah well Japan is forum convienens for this because the paties are here and so is all of the best evidence" and if the Judge accepted that argument the case is very likely going to go ahead there regardless of what it says in the contract. It could very well be that there is a law in Japan that says regardless of contract all cases involving a Japanese company must be sued in a Japanese court. I doubt that law exists but just as an example that would override that contract.
A judge isn't bound by what is written in a contract, only by power given to them by the law. They don't have a problem striking any or all of a contract if they believe it is in the interest of justice / complying with their law.
Neither a Japanese nor an American court are going to tell the court of another country that they got their own law wrong. I'm not going to say something like this would never happen or that courts never play favorites with a local company, but it's very unlikely in this case.
Sorry that's not what I was trying to say. It's not a Japanese court saying to an American court "you got American law wrong". It would be a Japanese court saying "it doesn't matter what you said in the USA, you want to enforce an order against a person/property that is located in and falls under the laws of Japan and we get to decide whether or not that order gets enforced". As I said above even if everything else the American court did was correct, the Japanese court could find fault with only one thing (like perhaps in the USA it isn't required to serve the defendant - I know it's not but for argument's sake... and Japan could say "hey in Japan we have a requirement that a defendant have a fair chance to make a case in their own defence before an order is made - since that didn't happen in this case we aren't enforcing".
