Definition
A historical procedural remedy awarding a prevailing party one-and-a-half times the ordinary single costs of a suit. Despite the term's literal suggestion, double costs did not mean twice the ordinary costs. Instead, the award consisted of the standard costs plus one-half of that amount — effectively 150% of ordinary costs, not 200%.
The remedy functioned as a mild punitive or deterrent measure in litigation, imposed in specified circumstances where a party had brought or prolonged litigation without sufficient justification, or where a statute authorized enhanced cost recovery.
Why It Matters in Research
The primary trap in historical sources is the arithmetic. A researcher encountering "double costs" in an old English or American case or treatise and reading it as "twice the costs" will misread the magnitude of the award. The term is a legal term of art with a specific, non-intuitive meaning that all major dictionaries are careful to flag.
English statutory abolition matters for chronological framing. Double costs as a formal remedy were abolished in England by 5 & 6 Vict. c. 97 (1842). Any English case or commentary after that date discussing double costs is almost certainly historical or comparative in nature. American practice varied by jurisdiction and statute, and some American courts and legislatures preserved or adapted forms of enhanced cost awards into the nineteenth century and beyond. Researchers working in American state court records should not assume that English abolition governed local practice.
When tracing cost-related litigation strategy in the Law Mind corpus, double costs connect to the broader costs-and-taxation framework. A researcher who finds references to double costs in older American procedural materials should also consult sources on statutory cost provisions, as double costs were often triggered by specific statutory conditions rather than general judicial discretion.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's are in close agreement — nearly verbatim on the substantive definition, all citing 2 Tidd's Practice 987 as the authoritative source, and all explicitly correcting the natural reading of "double." The convergence across three independent dictionaries on both the definition and the correction signals that this was a well-settled technical usage by the time these works were compiled, and that confusion about the arithmetic was common enough to require explicit flagging in each entry.
Bouvier's simply cross-references its fuller Costs entry, which is typical of Bouvier's organizational approach but provides less direct help to a researcher who encounters the standalone term. Burrill's and Black's are more useful as standalone entries.
What the historical sources collectively leave unaddressed is American statutory variation. The citations are primarily to English practice authority, and neither the abolition statute nor Tidd speaks to how American jurisdictions adapted or retained the concept. Researchers working in American materials will need to consult jurisdiction-specific statutes and practice guides.
Jurisdictional Note
Double costs as a formally defined remedy are largely a creature of historical English practice, abolished in England in 1842. In American jurisdictions, enhanced cost provisions developed independently through state statutes; the specific "one-and-a-half times" formulation may not apply, and the term, when it appears in American authorities, may be used loosely or with jurisdiction-specific meaning.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
civpro_142: Costs and Taxation of Costs — Rule 54(d) and 28 USC 1920 (The Law Mind Civil Procedure & Evidence Encyclopedia)