The issue of legal costs is decided in every civil case, and this aspect of court proceedings may also imply a dispute that is to be resolved when appealing a court decision. Uniform and predictable case-law is also important in resolving this issue, which is why the Supreme Court has prepared a compilation of case-law on legal costs.

The Supreme Court previously compiled its case-law on legal costs in 2003. The present compilation now covers case-law from 101 court rulings adopted since 2000.

Taking into account that the legislator has made 47 amendments to Chapter 4 of the Civil Procedure Law "Legal Expenses" between 2000 and the second half of 2024 (it is one of the most amended sections of this normative regulation), the compilation basically includes legal findings which have not lost their relevance after the changes in the regulation and have sometimes been the only ones to address the relevant legal issue. However, "historical" rulings before the amendment of the wording of the norm have also been preserved, the findings of which contributed to these changes.

The compilation is presented in the order of norms of the relevant chapter of the Civil Procedure Law. The Senate's findings on a relevant norm are arranged in chronological order, from the most recent to the oldest, and are supplemented by findings of other courts. Where a finding refers to the interaction of several norms, it is to be found under all those norms, i.e. the finding may be repeated several times in the compilation.

Five rulings of the Constitutional Court have been adopted in relation to this chapter of the Civil Procedure Law, and references to them are placed next to the relevant norm in its chronological series of legal findings. Similarly, the general chronology also includes extracts from six rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and four rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union dealing with legal costs.

Most of the texts of the rulings are available on the Supreme Court's website or in the e-resources of the Constitutional Court, the Court of Justice of the European Union or the European Court of Human Rights respectively, while the older texts can also be found in the yearbooks of judgments and decisions of the Senate’s Department of Civil Cases.

The compilation was prepared by the Division of Case-law and Research of the Supreme Court in cooperation with the Senate’s Department of Civil Cases.

 

 

Information prepared by

Rasma Zvejniece, Head of the Division of Communication of the Supreme Court

E-mail: rasma.zvejniece@at.gov.lv, telephone: +371 67020396, +371 28652211