Case ID: ad_15/html/0212-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam :", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Anna V. Gillespy, Respondent, v. William H. Bilbrough, Appellant.
    
      Extra allowance — not granted where a cause is tried in an hour and is neither difficult nor extraordinary.
    
    Where an action, brought to recover for moneys loaned, is tried as a short cause and the trial is concluded within an hour, and the record does not disclose anything difficult or extraordinary in the case, no basis is furnished for the granting of an extra allowance.
    Appeal by the defendant, William H. Bilbrough, from an order of the Supreme Court, made at the Albany Special Term and entered in the office of the clerk of the county of Rensselaer on the 27th day of November, 1896, denying his motion to vacate an order granting the plaintiff an extra allowance.
    The plaintiff’s complaint is for money loaned, and demands judgment for $4,580, with interest from the 3d of June, 1896.
    The defendant in his answer interposed a general denial, and also set up a counterclaim for moneys paid by the defendant to the plaintiff to the amount of $455. The plaintiff by reply denied the facts alleged as a counterclaim in defendant’s answer.
    
      The plaintiff caused the action to be placed on the short cause calendar at the Trial Term of this court, held in October, 1896, and the case was thereafter tried as a short cause, and was concluded within one hour. The jury found a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $3,516.50. Upon the coming in of the jury and the rendition of the verdict, the court granted the plaintiff an extra allowance of $100.
    The defendant’s attorney appears to have been absent when the verdict was rendered, and the motion for an extra allowance was made in his absence. Thereafter, at a Special Term held by the same justice who presided at the Trial Term, amotion was made by the defendant to vacate the order granting the plaintiff an extra allowance; that motion was denied, and from the order denying the same this appeal is taken.
    
      Baldwin & Baldwin, for the appellant.
    
      George J. McDonnell and Frederick Collin, for the respondent.
   Per Curiam :

Unless we are prepared to hold that every case that goes to trial is a difficult and extraordinary case, within the meaning of the Code, this order cannot be sustained.

What was said by the court in Duncan v. De Witt (7 Hun, 184) is still the law in relation to allowances of costs in difficult and extraordinary cases, and there is no need of reiterating what was there said.

The expenses of litigation have become a great burden upon those compelled to go into courts of justice to settle their controversies, and the courts should be careful not to add to those burdens except for good and sufficient reasons.

In this case the record does not disclose anything either difficult or extraordinary. It is a plain, every-day lawsuit. The only thing that is exceptional in it is the very brief time it took to try it.

The order should be reversed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements, and the motion granted, with ten dollars costs.

All concurred.

Order reversed, with ten dollars costs and disbursements, and motion granted, with ten dollars costs.