Definition
Law charges are the costs and expenses incurred by a party in the course of litigating a suit in court, taxed against and required to be paid by the losing party (the party cast) upon judgment. The term is specific to Louisiana civil law practice, drawn from the Louisiana Civil Code, and functions as the civil law equivalent of what common law jurisdictions call court costs or taxable costs.
The phrase encompasses the formal expenses of prosecution recognized by the court as assessable against the unsuccessful litigant — not attorney's fees generally, but those litigation expenses the court formally recognizes as chargeable to the losing side.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Law charges" does not appear as a standard entry in modern general dictionaries. In ordinary contemporary usage, the phrase would be read as a generic reference to fees or expenses associated with legal matters.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's 1913 does not carry a specific entry for "law charges" as a compound term. "Charge" in common usage meant a price demanded, a burden, or an accusation.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant here. A modern reader encountering "law charges" in a Louisiana historical document might assume the phrase refers to attorney's fees, filing fees broadly, or even criminal accusations. In its technical legal context, it refers specifically to court-assessed litigation costs taxed against the losing party — a narrower, procedurally defined category with direct consequences for judgment enforcement.
Common Confusion
Law charges should not be confused with attorney's fees. In the Louisiana civil law tradition, law charges are a defined, court-recognized category of taxable costs — items the court formally assesses as recoverable by the prevailing party. Attorney's fees, by contrast, are generally not included within law charges absent specific statutory authorization. Researchers reading historical Louisiana pleadings or judgments must also distinguish law charges from damages or penalties, which arise from the substance of the claim rather than the procedural costs of litigating it.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in Louisiana legal materials, particularly those predating comprehensive codification of civil procedure. Researchers working in the Law Mind corpus should treat "law charges" as a Louisiana-specific term of art and not assume it carries meaning in sources from common law jurisdictions.
Two navigational traps deserve attention. First, the phrase disappears from mainstream American legal lexicons after the mid-nineteenth century; modern Louisiana practice uses "court costs" or "costs" rather than "law charges," so researchers tracing procedural history across time periods must account for the terminological shift. Second, Black's Law Dictionary's entry for this term is followed immediately — without clear separation — by two Wingfield and Finch maxim references beginning "Law construeth every act to be lawful..." These maxims are unrelated to law charges and appear to be a formatting artifact of the original compilation. Researchers reading the Black's entry should treat those maxims as a separate, appended passage, not as part of the law charges definition.
The term matters most when researching: Louisiana succession litigation, commercial disputes from the territorial and early statehood period, and any proceeding where judgment enforcement depended on identifying what costs were recoverable. The Louisiana Reports citations embedded in both source dictionaries (17 La. 206; 11 Rob. (La.) 28; 3 Mart. (La.) 282) point to early nineteenth-century Louisiana appellate decisions that applied the term and may provide the most authoritative historical gloss on its scope.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's are in complete agreement on substance: both define law charges as court costs taxable against the losing party in Louisiana civil proceedings, and both anchor the definition to the same Louisiana Reports citations. Bouvier adds a third citation (3 Mart. (La.) 282) not present in Black's, which may provide additional doctrinal context for the term's early application.
Neither source addresses how law charges were calculated, which specific cost items qualified, or whether the category evolved over time. Both entries are brief, suggesting the term was understood by practitioners of the period without need for elaboration — which itself signals that researchers seeking definitional precision should go directly to the Louisiana Reports cases rather than relying on these dictionary entries alone.
Neither dictionary addresses the term's disappearance from later practice vocabulary, and neither flags the maxim passages that follow in Black's as unrelated material.
Jurisdictional Note
Law charges as a defined legal term is specific to Louisiana civil law, reflecting the state's civilian heritage. Common law jurisdictions use "costs" or "court costs" to describe the same general concept, governed by their own procedural rules. Researchers should not apply this term or its Louisiana-specific meaning to materials from other American jurisdictions.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia, Prorations — Taxes, Insurance, Rents, HOA Assessments, and Utility Charges (realestate_39): relevant for researchers tracing how various charge categories are allocated between parties at closing, which may illuminate analogous cost-allocation principles.