B2C2 Ltd v Quoine Pte Ltd
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Court | International Commercial Court (Singapore) |
Judge | Simon Thorley IJ |
Judgment Date | 18 July 2018 |
Neutral Citation | [2018] SGHC(I) 8 |
Citation | [2018] SGHC(I) 8 |
Published date | 25 July 2018 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Danny Ong, Sheila Ng and Rachel Low (Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP) |
Defendant Counsel | Paul Ong, Ivan Lim and Marrissa Karuna (Allen & Gledhill) |
Docket Number | Suit No 7 of 2017 (Summons No 14 of 2018) |
Hearing Date | 13 June 2018,12 July 2018 |
Date | 18 July 2018 |
Subject Matter | Civil Procedure,Costs,Security for costs |
On 14 May 2018, the Defendant filed an application for security for costs in this ongoing litigation. I have already given two judgments on interlocutory matters; the first, on 27 December 2017 (
It is not necessary for the purpose of this judgment to rehearse the facts in any further detail, beyond the following.
The Defendant is a Singapore registered company which operates a currency exchange platform (the “Platform”) enabling third parties to trade virtual currencies for other virtual currencies or for fiat currencies such as Singapore or US dollars. The two virtual currencies involved in this action are Bitcoin (“BTC”) and Ethereum (“ETH”).
The Plaintiff is a company registered in England and Wales trading
On 19 April 2017, the Plaintiff placed a number of ETH/BTC orders on the Defendant’s platform, of which seven orders are the subject of this litigation.
According to the Defendant, sometime after 23:30 on that day, a “technical glitch” arose on the Platform as a result of which those orders were met at a rate approximately 250 times the then market rate previously quoted for ETH/BTC exchange. On discovering this, the Defendant unilaterally reversed the trades, which the Plaintiff contends constituted a breach of the agreement between them.
The action was originally commenced in the Singapore High Court but was subsequently transferred to the Singapore International Commercial Court (“SICC”) on 24
In response to the plaintiff’s application for summary judgment (referred to at [1] above), the Defendant put forward a number of proposed defences, two of which I held to be arguable. These were referred to in the judgment under the headings “Issue (b): The Risk Disclosure Statement argument” and “Issue (c): Unilateral mistake at common law”. Of the other proposed defences, I said this at [29]:
Since the matter is to go to trial, I shall not give any reasoning in relation to the other issues. However, as I indicated, based on the material before me at present, I am not persuaded that any of the other defences could succeed if both issues (b) and (c) did not. It is however a matter for the Defendant and its advisers, having heard the arguments on this hearing, to decide whether they would like the trial judge to rule on those defences.
Since that date, the Defendant has decided to have all the issues considered at trial with the consequence that the current estimate of the length of trial is about six days.
Prior to the transfer into this Court, the Defendant sought security for costs from the Plaintiff and the parties agreed that the Plaintiff would provide the sum of S$80,000 as security for costs up to the date of trial by way of a solicitor’s undertaking. This was done on 27 July 2017 and, on the Plaintiff’s part, it was expressly stated that such security was given without any acknowledgment or admission in relation to the Defendant’s entitlement to any further security and that it reserved its position in this regard.
The present application By this application, the Defendant seeks a further sum of S$70,000 in respect of the costs up to the commencement of trial and S$120,000 for the Defendant’s costs of the trial. The application is based on the following grounds:
The Plaintiff opposes the making of the order on the following grounds.
Order 23 r 1 of the Rules applies to applications for security for costs in the High Court and the relevant part of the rule provides as follows:
Security for costs of action, etc. (O. 23, r. 1)
then, if, having regard to all the circumstances of the case, the Court thinks it just to do so, it may order the plaintiff to give such security for the defendant’s costs of the action or other proceeding as it thinks just.
[emphasis added]
Order 110 r 45 is however the rule which applies to cases in the SICC. The relevant parts of the rule provide:
Security for costs (O. 110, r. 45)
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