I thought I’d take look, from a different angle, at how our State’s small claims filing fees have changed over the last quarter century. I wrote a recursive method (using Processing) that generated a line graph of percentage change from each of the 26 years prior to 2010. The blue line represents the first graph, 1984-2010.

Percentage change in nc small court claims filing fees

As usual, these figures compare inflation-adjusted dollars.

It is interesting to see how the statistics change depending on where you start. In my last post, I wrote that filing fees have increased by 140% in the 26 year period. I thought this was a large change, when compared to other fee increases. But as you can see above, if I had looked at only a 21 year period, I would have been able to claim a 181% increase. Big difference!

(Sources: N.C. Session Laws; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)