The Judicial Costs in Civil Cases in the Duchy of Warsaw and the Congress Kingdom of Poland (Until 1876)

Abstract

The paper concerns the issue of litigation costs in the Duchy of Warsaw and the Congress Kingdom of Poland (until the unification of Polish courts with Russian judicial system in the 1870s). The litigation costs included: court fees, attorney’s salary, hiring expert witnesses, travel expenses and delivery charges.

Among the listed the most important were the court fees, that were paid with stamped paper. The author focused on three statutes which regulated the stamp tax (acts of 1809, 1811 and 1863). In litigations concerning pecuniary claims tax depended on the amount of pretence (the tax rate decreased as the amount of claim increased), however, in disputes on non-pecuniary claims, court fees depended on parties’ purse or were set as a lump sum.