Background
The plaintiff filed submissions challenging the court costs assessed in a Federal Court of Justice invoice dated February 16, 2026, with an invoice date of February 18, 2026. The court construed the submissions, dated “24/09 June 2026” and August 2, 2026, together as a single objection to the cost assessment under § 66(1), sentence 1, of the German Court Costs Act.
The objection was admissible and, under § 66(6), sentence 1, was decided by a single judge. The plaintiff argued that the underlying dispute had been decided incorrectly on the merits.
The Court’s Holding
The Federal Court of Justice rejected the objection because the costs had been calculated correctly. It held that proceedings challenging a cost assessment permit only objections directed at the assessment itself.
The court therefore declined to examine the plaintiff’s attack on the merits of the underlying decision. It explained that cost-objection proceedings do not provide a forum for reviewing the legality or constitutionality of an earlier merits decision, including that decision’s allocation of costs.
The court imposed no court fee for the objection proceeding and ordered that extrajudicial costs would not be reimbursed, pursuant to § 66(8) of the German Court Costs Act.
Key Takeaways
- An objection under § 66 of the German Court Costs Act is limited to alleged errors in the court’s cost assessment.
- The proceeding cannot be used to challenge the merits, legality, or constitutionality of the underlying judgment or its costs ruling.
- The objection proceeding is free of court fees, and extrajudicial costs are not reimbursed.
Why It Matters
The decision draws a clear procedural boundary between reviewing the calculation of court fees and revisiting the decision that gave rise to those fees. A party cannot turn a cost-assessment objection into a renewed merits review.
For practitioners, the ruling underscores that arguments under § 66 must identify a defect in the assessment of costs itself; disagreement with the underlying adjudication falls outside the scope of that proceeding.