Filing Fees
Generally, filing fees are controversial because some individuals believe that they impede access to justice. Although American litigants complain about fees all the time (for example, it costs $400 to file a complaint in Los Angeles), the American system is considered to be quite plaintiff-friendly by lawyers.
Many legal systems have filing fees for complaints that are proportional to the amount sought. Thus, the greater the damages sought, the higher the fee to file.
Even when one seeks a waiver for grossly unfair fees, courts tend to waive only the amount in excess of the plaintiff's total assets, with the result that just to initiate a meritorious case, an already severely injured or damaged plaintiff may have to go bankrupt. What some consider to be the inherent unfairness of this system as actually implemented in Austria resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Republic of Austria v. Altmann (2004).
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Famous quotes containing the word filing:
“Is not the whole world a vast house of assignation of which the filing system has been lost?”
—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)