City of Los Angeles v. Vickers

WORKS, P. J.

This action involves the exercise of the right of eminent domain. Decree of condemnation having-gone for plaintiff, defendant Youngworth filed a memorandum of his costs and disbursements, whereupon plaintiff filed its notice of motion to tax the costs. Upon the motion coming on to be heard the trial court made its order denying it. Prom this order plaintiff appeals.

The items of the cost bill to which exception was taken showed the payment of fees to certain experts upon the value of real property, in compensation for their time expended in testifying for respondent. These fees were in addition to and much in excess of amounts payable to witnesses under the law as “witness fees,” strictly so-called, and for mileage. Respondent contends that the charges of the experts for testifying are collectible as “costs,” for the reason that to deny to him a recovery of them would be to lessen the amount awarded to him for his lands by the condemnation decree. The result, so he says, will be a violation of the constitutional inhibition against the taking of private property for public use without just compensation. Appellant contends that the charges are not collectible as costs at all.

We must say at the outset that we cannot agree with the contention of respondent in its fullness. It is the rule as to litigation other than that involving the exercise of the right of eminent domain that the right to recover costs is purely statutory

(People

v.

Feraud,

45 Cal. App. 765 [188 Pac. 843]). And it has been said in a condemnation case: “The word 'costs,' when used in relation to the expenses of legal proceedings, means the sum prescribed by law as

[739]

charges for the services enumerated in the fee-bill”

(City of St. Louis

v.

Meintz,

107 Mo. 611 [18 S. W. 30]). Another court has remarked in a proceeding of a similar nature: “This claim [for the fees of experts] was disallowed on the ground that the act of assembly, in providing that in a proceeding such as this all costs shall be paid by the municipal corporation, had in contemplation only such costs as may be legally taxed in the ordinary action, and not those expenses which a party to the cause may have incurred. We entertain no doubt whatever as to the correctness of this conclusion. The word ‘costs,’ as used in this connection has a fixed and definite meaning, viz., costs authorized by statutes”