Litigation costs
Litigation costs are the expenses of the parties for the conduct of a legal dispute. They are made up of court costs and extrajudicial costs. Regulations on legal costs can be found in sections 91-107 of the Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO).
Extrajudicial costs are the other costs incurred by the parties, in particular the legal fees , the party's travel costs and the costs for expert opinions, insofar as these were only necessary for the preparation of a process, but not in the process itself. In the event of disputes in the field of industrial property rights ( Patent law, utility model law, trademark law) usually also include the fees of participating patent attorneys . These correspond to those of the legal fees, so that legal fees in these areas can double.
At the end of a legal proceeding, the court makes its final decision which party has to bear which proportion of the legal costs (so-called basic cost decision ). To the extent that the ruling generally concerns the costs of the legal dispute, it concerns both court costs and extrajudicial costs. In some cases court costs and extrajudicial costs are decided separately.
The decision on the court costs leads to the fact that the cost debtor receives a cost calculation for the fees and expenses to be borne by him according to the court costs law.
The decision on the extrajudicial costs results in the prevailing party having a procedural claim for reimbursement of costs against the party on whom the costs were imposed because of their extrajudicial costs. This claim is asserted by applying for a cost-fixing decision according to § 104 ZPO on the basis of the cost decision (which only determines the reason for the claim) , which is issued by the judicial officer at the court of first instance . The costs to be reimbursed are determined according to the amount in the cost fixing decision after checking whether they were necessary for appropriate legal prosecution or legal defense. The decision to fix costs is an enforcement order .
See also
literature
- Riehl, Jürgen: Legal costs and the use of the administration of justice. An economic analysis of legal behavior. Berlin: 2003. ISBN 3-936749-59-0
