Indigency Protections Go Way Back.
Yesterday, we did a post on Garcia v. Santana, an interesting Second District decision that held that financial condition was a factor to consider when awarding fees under Civil Code section 1354(c), a fee-shifting statute under the Davis-Stirling Act.
Here is some trivia for you history buffs out there.
Indigents’ rights of access to the courts go back to English days. Specifically, a statute passed under the reign of King Henry VII in 1495 provided for waiver of pretrial fees and costs with respect to indigents. Later, under the reign of Henry VIII, another statute was enacted that provided relief from automatic payment of costs of the opponent should the indigent litigant lose. The 1495 statute is even quoted in full in Justice Johnson’s concurrence in Baltayan v. Getemyan, 90 Cal.App.4th 1427, 1437-1438 (2001).
Interestingly enough, Justice Johnson in Baltayan concluded that “access trumps comfort,” meaning that the scales of justice had to tip in favor of indigent access to the courts. In Garcia, Acting Presiding Justice Woods penned his own concurrence expressing discomfort with the breadth of this conclusion by Justice Johnson. Justice Woods cited vexatious litigant countervailing protections as a basis for his discomfort with the breadth of the bright line rule endorsed by Justice Johnson in Baltayan.
Henry VII (left, attributed to Michael Sittow). Henry VIII (right).
(Wikipedia).