Legal aid

Claimant with current legal aid certificate third party offering financial support for interlocutory application costs order in successful claimants favour refusedStacey v Player and...Claimant with current legal aid certificate third party offering financial support for interlocutory application costs order in successful claimants favour refusedStacey v Player and Another: ChD (Mr Peter Leaver QC sitting as a deputy High Court judge): 24 January 2001The claimant obtained legal aid to prosecute his case, during the course of which he made interlocutory applications with the financial support of a third party.

The Legal Services Commission did not fund those applications but continued to fund the rest of the litigation.

The claimant was successful and applied for his costs against the first defendant.

The first defendant objected.Romie Tager QC and Michelle Stevens-Hoare (instructed by Pritchard Joyce & Hinds, Beckenham) for the claimant; Frances Moraes (instructed by Brachers, Maidstone) for the first defendant; Marc Dight (instructed by Finers Stephens Innocent) for the second defendant.Held, finding in favour of the first defendant, that there should be no order for costs; that the claimants legal aid certificate was subsisting at the time of the applications; that under reg.

64 of the Civil Legal Aid (General) Regulations 1989 (S.I.

No.339 of 1989) where a certificate had been issued the assisted persons solicitor or counsel could only receive payment from the legal aid board and could not receive any payment for work done in proceedings during the currency of the certificate, whether within the scope of the certificate or otherwise, from any other source; that an order for costs in favour of the claimant would result in the contravention of reg.64 since the claimants legal representatives would receive payment from a source other than the Legal Aid Board; and that, accordingly, no order for costs would be made.