Tarrant County has agreed to settle a decade-long lawsuit that accused the district clerk of charging hundreds of dollars in court fees to low-income people who should have been exempt.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2013, challenged District Clerk Tom Wilder over charging people for court fees in divorce cases, even though the litigants had filed the proper paperwork proving their inability to pay. Last week, Tarrant County Commissioners agreed to pay $150,000 to settle the case.
Tom Stutz, an attorney with Legal Aid of Northwest Texas, represented one group of plaintiffs in the case. Ending the county’s practice of charging these fees was a victory for equal access to the courts, he said.
"We're supposed to have open courts, by constitution,” Stutz said. “And one way we do that is to ensure that people aren’t kept out of that because they just can't afford to pay court costs."
Multiple plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in 2013, on their own behalf and for the hundreds, if not thousands, of indigent litigants who may have also been improperly charged, the lawsuit states.
One of the plaintiffs, Odell Campbell, brought home $674 a month, with just $44 left after expenses, according to the affidavit of indigency he filed during his divorce proceedings. Almost a year later, he learned the court was seeking $271 in court fees from him, the lawsuit states.
Wilder argued then, and again in Commissioners Court last week, that he was following the legal advice of the DA’s office.
"I did what they said, which was, I must collect the money,” Wilder said.
In April 2013, a judge ordered Tarrant County to stop charging these court fees. An appeals court then threw out that order and dismissed the case, before the Texas Supreme Court reinstated the lawsuit and the order in 2016.
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