No it's not. Both because courts don't always give you costs, and because even when they do award costs, actually collecting is tough, and finally, because courts don't always award the full amount of your costs.

Source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/attorney-fees-does-l...

"To further this goal, the losing side doesn’t usually pay the winning side's attorney's fees. In the United States, the rule (called the American Rule) is that each party pays only their own attorneys' fees, regardless of whether they win or lose."

US courts can award costs, and they do in many circumstances. But it is not automatic by any means. Even in countries where costs are awarded automatically, actually collecting on those costs is difficult - I personally know people who have successfully defended themselves and are in exactly this situation in the EU.

I have an outstanding judgment for over $100k against a home builder that my lawyer told me I have about a 1% chance of ever collecting on. This isn’t even a situation where I can file a lien; the company is out of business because of their shoddy business practices and the former owners are broke.

Meanwhile I had to pay my lawyer. I would have been better off doing nothing, and in hindsight I would not pursue the case.

This is a fairly common pattern among home builders. Start John's Construction, make some money, live the high life for a few years, homes start to show signs of issues, go bankrupt, then start Jon's Construction and begin the process over again.

That’s why I just went ahead and fixed the issues my house had — I assumed any other new home would have similar issues, and I couldn’t sell the place without remediating them anyway. I had expected to recoup at least some of the cost though.

Costs and fees are completely different.

You are over complicating the issue and misunderstanding it. Quite simply the loser of a law suit typically bears the costs of court fees and legal expenses for both parties unless a different arrangement is negotiated. How high those expenses are are irrelevant to this issue and are generally not known before or during trial.

I have sued someone in the US and had this discussion with my lawyers. What you are saying simply is not true in the US. It's such a well known feature of the US legal system that it's even called "American Rule": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_rule_(attorney%27s_fe...

Did your attorneys discuss fees with the opposing party prior to the suit? If not that’s why. This is common practice. It’s also why Google sent Oracle an extremely large legal bill when Oracle lost its first lawsuit over Java APIs.

You replied to:

> In Germany, all costs associated with a lawsuit have to be paid/reimbursed by the losing party.

with:

> That is already how it works in US civil litigation.

An optional agreement between parties is absolutely not the same as a mandatory, by-default, loser pays system. And yes, in my case getting an agreement like that was certainly going to be impossible.

Also, re: Google and Oracle, the payment was after petitioning the judge - as often happens - and those costs were awarded because the lawsuit was particularly pointless. Yet even then they did not include millions of dollars in discovery costs, so Google got much less than 100% of their legal costs: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/25667/oracle_must_pay_google_... I do not believe you are correct in saying there was any prior agreement.

Civil suits are optional. Discussions between parties in civil suits are mostly optional. The only thing about that isn't optional are the procedures and a final ruling on the matter. In most cases of civil suits the lawyers negotiate the expenditures going in. This is why many plaintiff lawyers won't accept every case that comes their way.

Nonsensical as it might be, "costs" does not mean net expenditures, but rather costs associated with filing fees, document production, etc. The loser may well pay "costs," but attorney time, which is by far the biggest expenditure in a lawsuit, is not included.

Note that in my comment, when I said "costs" I was referring to the loose layman definition, not the legal definition. Depending on the circumstances if you are awarded anything, it could be for the costs you refer to, attorney fees, both, or some other mixture (it's particularly frequent to see judges award less than what attorneys charged on the basis that you overpaid).

And of course, nothing at all. And yes, I agree that having only some types of costs awarded and not others can easily be absurd.

It absolutely isn’t. The loser pays system is extremely uncommon in American civil practice.