Definition
Accruing costs are costs and fees that continue to accumulate after a judgment has been entered. They are distinct from the costs that led up to or were fixed at the time of judgment. In practical terms, once a court renders judgment, the winning party may incur additional expenses in enforcing that judgment — through collection proceedings, writs of execution, supplemental hearings, or appeals — and those ongoing expenses constitute accruing costs.
The concept answers a specific problem: a judgment fixes liability at a point in time, but litigation rarely ends there. Enforcement can be protracted and expensive, and the law recognizes that a judgment creditor should be able to recover reasonable costs incurred in pursuit of what the court has already awarded.
Why It Matters in Research
The critical distinction for researchers is the temporal boundary: accruing costs arise after judgment, not before and not simultaneously with it. Sources that discuss "costs" generally — including taxation of costs under Rule 54(d) and 28 U.S.C. § 1920 — address what is taxable at or before judgment. Accruing costs occupy a separate procedural space, often addressed through post-judgment motions, supplemental cost bills, or enforcement proceedings rather than the standard taxation process.
Researchers working in historical sources should be aware that the line between pre-judgment and post-judgment costs was not always cleanly drawn, and older authorities sometimes use "costs" to refer to the full span of litigation expenses without distinguishing when they were incurred. When reading nineteenth- and early twentieth-century treatises and reporters, context is essential: look for language indicating the stage of proceedings before concluding that a source is speaking about accruing costs in the modern technical sense.
Jurisdictional statutes governing cost recovery in enforcement proceedings vary considerably. A researcher tracing accruing costs in a state-court enforcement action cannot assume that federal cost-taxation rules apply or that the categories of recoverable post-judgment costs match those available under federal practice.
The term also appears in judgment lien contexts, where ongoing interest and costs can affect the priority and amount of a lien over time. This creates overlap with research into execution, garnishment, and lien priority — all areas where the running nature of accruing costs becomes practically significant.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary preserves the core of the definition concisely, noting that accruing costs are expenses incurred after judgment. The entry is brief, consistent with the term's relatively narrow technical scope. The historical formulation aligns with modern usage without meaningful divergence, though older editions of Black's and contemporaneous dictionaries do not elaborate on which categories of post-judgment expense qualify or how they are taxed — questions left to procedural rules and case law.
No significant disagreement appears across the historical dictionary sources available. The brevity of historical treatment reflects that accruing costs function as a modifier within the broader law of costs rather than as an independent doctrine requiring extensive definition. What historical dictionaries miss, as a practical matter, is any guidance on the procedural mechanism for claiming accruing costs — that gap must be filled by procedural rules, local court rules, and enforcement statutes.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal courts address post-judgment costs primarily through Rule 54(d) and 28 U.S.C. § 1920, but those provisions govern taxation of costs generally and do not exhaustively define what accrues after judgment. State courts often have independent statutory frameworks for recoverable enforcement costs. Researchers should identify the governing procedural rules for the jurisdiction and stage of proceedings before assuming any particular category of expense is recoverable as an accruing cost.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Costs and Taxation of Costs — Rule 54(d) and 28 USC 1920 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)