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Auckland man fails to overturn bankruptcy after $34k fines defending $80 speeding ticket (www.nzherald.co.nz)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Court costs are different than a fine.

If a random guy sued you for a nonsense reason and you had to show up to court and pay a lawyer hundreds of dollars just to basically say "this lawsuit is frivolous and the ruling is self evident", it's reasonable to expect that ransom guy to pay your court costs. The alternative is being sued itself would be like a fine. If some dude with a vendetta sued me 10 times over that I'd be ruined no matter the result.

So frivolous, ungrounded lawsuits have a cost to them that actually has nothing to do with the courts getting money, it has to do with making it right that someone has wasted your own time and money.

This guy did that, and has to pay for not only his own lawyer (if he brought one, I expect he didn't) but also the lawyer for the city/police department.

Some areas do have an actual fine for wasting the court's time, so the lawyer thing might not be the only thing going on here, but no matter what, the guy gets to pay more for losing at court when the matter is considered obvious to everyone else and it seems he only wants to argue to avoid a perfectly legal fine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

it’s reasonable to expect that ransom guy to pay your court costs.

Yes, and if you've paid a good lawyer they will indeed get a judgement against "ransom guy" to pay all court costs including your lawyers' fees. What you won't often find is a good lawyer who will not charge you up front, because a judgement still needs to be collected, and collecting judgments from random ransom guys is a low odds business. See OP.