Walton v. Arabian American Oil Co.
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
233 F.2d 541 (1956)
Walton (plaintiff) was injured in a vehicle collision with an Aramco (defendant) employee in Saudi Arabia and sued for negligence in New York federal court, but declined the judge's suggestion to seek an adjournment to prove Saudi law, instead insisting New York law applied and unsupportedly asserting Saudi Arabia had no law or legal system; the trial judge directed a verdict for Aramco because Walton failed to prove the substantive foreign law governing his claim, expressly declining to take judicial notice of it.
Whether, where foreign law is relevant to a tort action but difficult to comprehend and neither party pleads or proves it, the court must take judicial notice of it.