Short answer. The court has discretion: it may render judgment for costs against the petitioner, the relator, the respondent, or a person or persons claiming to be a corporation, or it may apportion the costs among them, whichever justice requires under the circumstances of the case.

What the law says

In an action brought in accordance with the provisions of this Rule, the court may render judgment for costs against either the petitioner, the relator, or the respondent, or the person or persons claiming to be a corporation, or may apportion the costs, as justice requires.

Rule 66, Section 12 — Judgment for costs. Read the full provision →

No fixed rule on who pays

Unlike some other proceedings where costs routinely follow the losing party, quo warranto actions under this Rule give the court broad discretion over costs. The judgment for costs may be rendered against the petitioner, the relator, the respondent, or even a person or persons claiming to be a corporation — depending on the equities of the case. This flexibility recognizes that quo warranto cases can involve several different kinds of parties, each of whom might bear responsibility for the litigation in different ways. A court might, for instance, decide that a relator who pursued the case in obvious bad faith should bear costs even where the respondent ultimately loses on the merits.

Apportionment as an alternative

Rather than assigning costs to a single party, the court may instead apportion the costs among the parties, splitting responsibility for the expenses of the action in whatever proportion it finds fair given how the case actually played out. This option is particularly useful where more than one party contributed to prolonging the litigation, or where blame for the underlying dispute is genuinely shared among several of the parties involved. A court might split costs, for example, where both sides contributed roughly equally to needless delay or unnecessary motions during the proceedings.

The guiding standard is justice, not a formula

The rule's operative phrase is "as justice requires," signaling that cost allocation in quo warranto cases is meant to be fact-specific rather than mechanical. A party involved in such a case should not assume the standard winner-pays-nothing, loser-pays-everything pattern automatically applies, since the court retains real discretion to depart from that pattern based on the specific circumstances of the case before it. Parties should therefore be prepared to argue the equities of cost allocation just as they would argue the merits of the underlying usurpation claim itself. This discretion binds the court alone; it does not give any party the right to unilaterally insist on a particular allocation, since the final call on who bears the costs, or in what proportion, rests with the court's own judgment on the case as a whole.

Related provisions

Note. Statute text quoted on this page is reproduced from the official enactment and is linked to the full provision. The explanation around it is general legal information from Vivas & Nobles Law Office, not legal advice. Whether it applies to your situation depends on facts only a lawyer reviewing them can assess.