Having court fees waived off in civil appeal
Querist :
Anonymous
(Querist) 07 November 2022
This query is : Resolved
Hello,
In the Civil Suit decided earlier, we had given a number of citations from the SC and various HCs, during the oral arguments, and the case was 100% in our favour, as such. (The citations were also present in written arguments/submissions, submitted later on plain paper for the court's reference)
The suit was still decided against us, and our citations are not mentioned in the judgment, and heavy costs have been awarded to the other party.
• For filing the Civil Appeal, is there a way to have the court fees (in lakhs) waived off, considering we had already given the citations earlier, but they stood ignored, and now we have to file an appeal, for no fault of ours?
Sorry for being anonymous, but it is important.
T. Kalaiselvan, Advocate
(Expert) 18 September 2023
The citations need not be considered by court if the court finds it as irrelevant to the case.
However just by submitting the citations, you cannot claim waiver of court fee for filing appeal.
The court fees as applicable are to be paid for preferring appeal or else the appeal will not be entertained by court
Querist :
Anonymous
(Querist) 19 September 2023
The citations were actually fully applicable, as we discussed with a few lawyers too. They all stated that it may not have been possible to decide the Civil Suit against us while considering those citations.
Regarding the Civil Appeal, we filed it a while ago, but fortunately for us we found citations regarding court fee applicable at the time of filing of the Civil Suit being applicable for the Civil Appeal as well, since it is continuation of the original proceedings, which helped us a bit regarding the court fee situation.
However, we feel there should be discretion with the court to waive off court fee entirely, if the party is not themselves at fault, like in our case.
