[Casebrief]

Nantong Branch of COSCO Shipyard Engineering Service had a ship repair contract dispute with Zhongshuo Yihui Ship Management. As the whereabouts of Zhongshuo Yihui was unknown, Tianjin Maritime Court made a default judgment that Zhongshuo Yihui should pay repair expenses to Nantong Branch of COSCO Shipyard Engineering Service. Later, Nantong Branch of COSCO Shipyard Engineering Service applied to the court for enforcement. However, the enforcement personnel found that the whereabouts of Zhongshuo Yihui was unknown and there was no property for enforcement, so the enforcement was suspended. On the evening of December 11, 2019, the enforcement management platform of Tianjin Maritime Court received from the enforcement command center of the municipal higher court a message that Wei, the legal representative of Zhongshuo Yihui, would take a train at Tianjin West Railway Station at 20:40 that night to go to Zhenjiang City, Jiangsu Province. Then, the Court quickly initiated an enforcement plan. The enforcement personnel rushed to Tianjin West Railway Station and sent the enforcement document to the joint command center of Railway Public Security Bureau at the same time. At 19:40, the enforcement personnel arrived at the station, and carried out monitoring together with the policemen of the station. At about 20:00, they controlled Wei and announced the detention decision on the spot. Under the strong deterrence of justice, Wei confessed the illegal acts to the court and paid up the outstanding amount on the spot.

[Significance]

Since the defendants’whereaboutsare unknown,the cases with default judgments oftenbecome“dead cases” in the enforcement process. The enforcement of this case benefited from the implementation of the Opinions on Joint Investigation and Control of Persons Subject to Enforcement jointly signed by the higher courts of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei and the Railway Public Security Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security in June 2019. The Opinions established a linkage mechanism among the courts and the railway public security bureaus in terms of investigation and control of persons subject to enforcement, and provided effective assistance in solving the problem of “investigation” during enforcement by virtue of the linkage between enforcement command center and investigation and control command center of public securitybureaus as well as the joint efforts of the enforcement judges andthe policemen. As the first case of joint investigation and control for enforcement implemented by the courts of Tianjin,thiscasehasagoodresult.