Steven Davies reports on the ramifications of changing funding from legal aid to a conditional fee agreement
- Switching funding from legal aid to conditional fee agreement.
- Analysis of Hyde v Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
In the eagerly awaited decision of Hyde v Milton Keynes Hospital NHS Foundation Trust [2017] EWCA Civ 399, the Court of Appeal has clarified the position in a long-running case where there was a change of funding from legal aid to a conditional fee agreement (CFA) but the legal aid certificate was not formally discharged.
This was one of a number of recent cases in which changes in funding were more closely examined, particularly where the claimant’s solicitor chose to act in March 2013, the month before the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (also known as LASPO) came into force.
In this case, however, the timing appeared simply to be coincidental; rather, there were many fact-specific issues which were significant in deciding the reasonableness of the change of funding in this case.
Liability had been
