The Court of Appeal has dismissed Antonio Casimiro Lopes’s appeal against a High Court refusal to let him seek judicial review of the Legal Aid Board’s decision not to provide him with legal aid.
The legal aid application related to personal injuries proceedings brought by Mr Lopes in 2016 against his former GP and, later, a pharmaceutical company. He alleged that surgery in 2010 resulted in a medical condition and that a medication prescribed in 2011, which he said was contraindicated for people with that condition, caused him injuries. Those were allegations in the underlying proceedings, not findings in this appeal.
Mr Lopes also had separate proceedings against University Hospital Waterford arising from broadly the same circumstances. In 2019, the High Court ordered him to disclose pleadings and particulars from that case to the defendants in the GP and pharmaceutical company proceedings.
The Board refused an earlier legal aid application after Mr Lopes declined to provide documents from the hospital case. He did not appeal that refusal. On a fresh application in March 2020, he again declined to provide the documents. The Board refused the application under section 28(4)(d) of the Civil Legal Aid Act 1995, which allows refusal where information reasonably required to decide whether to grant a certificate has not been provided. The Appeal Committee upheld the refusal.
Mr Lopes sought leave to challenge that decision by judicial review, arguing, among other things, that the Board already had enough information and that it was wrong to require documents from litigation for which he was not seeking legal aid. The High Court refused leave, finding no arguable ground for judicial review. The Court of Appeal considered that refusal, rather than deciding the merits of the underlying injury claims or the legal aid application afresh.
In a judgment delivered on 23 June 2023, Mr Justice Noonan said the hospital records and pleadings were potentially highly relevant to assessing the related claim, including its prospects of success. He noted that the High Court had already ordered discovery of those documents in the personal injuries proceedings. The court concluded the Board’s request was objectively reasonable and that the challenge did not show the Board had acted outside its jurisdiction or that the High Court had erred.
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. It indicated that the Board appeared entitled to its costs, but gave Mr Lopes 14 days to make a written submission if he sought a different costs order; the Board could reply within a further 14 days. The judgment stated that, without submissions, an order in the proposed terms would be made.