Result Followed From The Clear Wording Of CCP §685.070(a)(5).
In Banda v. Wash, Case No. F077727 (5th Dist. Sept. 30, 2020) (unpublished), plaintiff obtained a civil harassment restraining order and concomitant attorney’s fees/costs of $16,814. She then filed a postjudgment debtor examination proceeding to require judgment creditor to appear for an examination, paying a mandatory $60 filing fee under Government Code section 70617(a)(6). This filing fee can be recovered under the Enforcement of Judgments Law (EJL) as a cost if it is a reasonable and necessary cost of enforcing the judgment. Plaintiff/judgment creditor filed a memorandum of costs after judgment claiming the $60 fee, which judgment debtor moved to tax and with the lower court deciding the fee was a proper cost item.
The Fifth District reversed as a matter of law, observing early on that the issue “presented a question of law not resolved in a published decision.” Judgment debtor argued that the fee was not allowable because the judge conducting the exam did not approve the reasonableness or necessity of the filing fee. Judgment creditor, conversely, argued that no approval was required because the fee is mandatory and set by statute. The appellate court sided with judgment debtor based on the literal wording of CCP § 685.070(a)(5) which has the qualifier that the costs “have been approved as to amount, reasonableness, and necessity by the judge or referee conducting the proceeding.” Further support for this conclusion came from the fact that the alternate way of claiming enforcement costs is to file a noticed motion for allowing costs which allows the trial judge to assess their propriety under the circumstances of the case. After all, automatically allowing costs—even though mandatory—which are unreasonable and unnecessary would fly in the face of limiting post-judgment expenses to ones which are reasonable and necessary.