A court in Alaska is asking the Yukon to uphold a decision regarding a woman in Whitehorse.

The District Court in Anchorage ruled that local business owner Micheline Cormier was partially responsible for paying back the outstanding balance of a $50,000 loan from the State of Alaska.

The court in Anchorage is asking the Yukon Supreme Court to uphold their decision which includes paying back the remainder of the loan, interest accrued on the outstanding balance and late charges, court documents say.

The loan was taken out by Farid Hosni, a U.S. man with whom Cormier was in partnership and married to at the time the loan was taken out, she said in an interview this morning.

Although she was the guarantor for the loan, Cormier says she was coerced into signing the document.

'The bottom line is that I was put under a lot of pressure to sign loans,' she said.

Cormier left Hosni and moved back to Canada.

She has been raising her three children alone since 2002, she said. She described the move back to the Yukon and the subsequent opening of her Whitehorse restaurant, Bocelli's Pizzeria, as 'a survival story.'

According to the Anchorage ruling, Cormier, Hosni and Sorrento Restaurant Corporation are jointly responsible for $24,666.05 outstanding on the loan itself, as well as $1,822.54 of interest and $1,282.64 of late fees accrued at that time.

The ruling also demands collateral or proceeds from collateral which may have been sold, to be paid to the state department.

While it is not necessarily commonplace to deal with cases like this in the Yukon, it is not uncommon for one court to ask a court in another country to uphold a decision regarding a financial agreement, according to law professor Anne Leforest from the University of New Brunswick.

This type of situation, in which a person enters into a financial contract in one place and subsequently moves without paying it off, is called a conflict of law, she said.

'It's not unusual for courts in other jurisdictions to enforce contracts if they've been entered into fairly,' she said.

For example, if a Yukoner were to rent a car in Alaska then leave the country without paying, the car rental company could well take civil action in the States. If the company wins, the Yukon courts can be asked to uphold the decision with respect to the financial contract made by the Yukoner and the car rental company, so the case could start in Alaska and end in the Yukon, the professor explained.

A similar case reached the Supreme Court of Canada in 2003, according to Leforest, when an Ontario man was held responsible for costs involving the sale of a property in Florida.

While the civil suit initially took place in the U.S., the man was ultimately held responsible for the costs in Canada, she explained.

While the Yukon's Department of Justice could not comment on the issue, the District Court in Anchorage said they were not aware of any other similar cases that crossed international borders.

Michael Brown, assistant supervisor for the civil division, compared the case to what happens within the U.S. when a case involves more than one State.

If there were a ruling in Alaska, for example, for a person living in California, the court may ask for registration of foreign judgment. This means that California would abide by the Alaska ruling, forcing the person to follow whatever demands or restrictions are set out in the ruling.

'I have not seen it done on an international basis. I'm sure it does happen,' he said.

While Brown has not encountered a case that crosses country borders, he said it would likely be dealt with similarly to those between states.

'I believe that they're doing what we call a registration of foreign judgment . . . and asking the Canadian government to recognize the judgment and then allow whatever process it takes to recover the money.'

Cormier said she has tried to negotiate a payment plan with the government in Alaska, however they could not reach an agreement that suited both sides.

'You can't bleed a stone,' she said.

'I can only do what I can do.'