The Telephone. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE POVERTY BAY STANDARD. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, AUGUST 21.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 215, 21 August 1884, Page 2

The Telephone. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE POVERTY BAY STANDARD. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. GISBORNE, THURSDAY, AUGUST 21.

In a place where litigation is so much in favor it may be well to draw attention to the fact that very large additions have been made to the scale of fees which has been in vogue of late years. People who don’t take the trouble, or those who do all their court business through solicirors are not likely to notice the hardships inflicted by the

imposition of the present high rate of fees. It may possibly have the effect in some cases of reducing litigation in a great many instances of a trivial character to a minimum, or what is still more to be desired, doing away with it altogether when intending suitors find out that the costs in many instances far exceed the amount of the original claim, but until that time arrives it is as well that a few facts should be made more widely known than they seem to be. To do this we cannot do better than re-echo the sentiments expressed by the New Zealand Times of the 12th instant. By the raising of all Court fees at a time of a falling off of revenue, it would seem that the Governm’ent considered that the increase of such fees was a legitimate means of taxation. But no idea is more unconstitutional; and to look on the Queen’s Courts as a means of revenue getting is a course opposed to the traditions of the race, and unjustifiable from any common sense point of view. It is entirely fallacious to say that the Crown should not be made the instrument for enabling a tradesman to collect his accounts; for so long as the law declares trade debts to be recoverable, means must be provided for recovering them, and “ the royal debt of justice” must be paid. In this colony since 1867, the fees in what may be called the people’s Court —the Resident Magistrate’s Court —have been found sufficiently heavy, and have remained unaltered. Business in these Courts has increased many fold, the fees received reducing the average cost of maintaining the Courts, but yet the late Government felt themselves justified in raising these fees in most instances from 30 to 100 per cent. The fees of the other Courts have also been raised, but what we desire to point out in the first instance is that the fees payable by persons invoking the aid of the Courts for small sums is out of all proportion to the amount of fees payable in large actions involving thousands of pounds. To show this, we will take an action brought in the lower Court to recover £5, and such actions as these are brought by persons in a small way of business, against persons also who are without great means, and against whomsoever judgment goes, the addition of costs is a material increase to the amount. We will suppose two witnesses have to be called. The plaintiff’s fees in such an action were, under the old rules, nine shillings, but have now been increased to sixteen shillings, equal to nearly a seventh of the whole claim. Taking an action in the same Court for /"100, we find the

Court fees run up to £2 6s; while in an action in the Supreme Court for £lO,OOO, where no more complicated proceedings are required, the fees are £2 2S. It must be understood we are not now going into the question of what the whole costs of an action are, with amounts paid to solicitors, witnesses, and so on, but merely comparing the fees payable to the Government for the judicial machinery provided by them. This disparity is even more remarkable in undefended actions on negotiable instruments, the fees chargeable in the Resident Magistrate’s Court on a bill of /"ioo being £2, while the fees in the Supreme Court on a bill up to any amount are, at the most, £1 6s. Now, although it is the duty of the Government to bring justice within reach of the people as cheaply as possible, it is perhaps permissible that some charge should be made against litigants for the particular services of the Courts, so long as these charges are fairly proportioned to the means of the suitors and the amounts involved in the suits. The cost of all criminal prosecutions must be borne by the taxpayers at large. Supposing then that no civil business was administered in any of the Courts, they would still have to be maintained at nearly the same cost as at present to administer the criminal work. Looking, then, at the returns showing the revenue and expenditure connected with the administration of justice, we find that during the past financial year—before the introduction of the increased scale of fees—the whole expenditure in connection with the maintenance of the Supreme Courts of the Colony, including the the judges’ salaries, was, in round figures, £1 5,700, while the revenue derived from them for the same period amounted to no less than /To,ooo. It must be remembered that nearly the whole of this revenue was derived from fees in civil actions, while the cost of maintaining the whole of the inferior Courts, District, Resident Magistrates’, and Warden’s (the returns do not separate their cost) came roundly to Z'50,000, a sum of £56,00 was received from them by way of fees and fines. Comment upon these figures is unnecessary. The result is this, that the fees charged in all the Courts were more than sufficient to cover the proportionate cost of the maintenance of the Courts of Justice chargeable to civil causes before the recent heavy increases; that the fees chargeable to the litigants in small matters might be largely reduced ; and that the increased scale of costs was not justified by the returns of the various Courts, but was an act resorted to by the late Ministry to meet a falling general revenue.