CBX and another v CBZ and others
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Court | International Commercial Court (Singapore) |
Judge | Anselmo Reyes IJ |
Judgment Date | 08 October 2020 |
Neutral Citation | [2020] SGHC(I) 21 |
Citation | [2020] SGHC(I) 21 |
Docket Number | Originating Summons No 1 of 2020 |
Subject Matter | Costs,Civil Procedure |
Defendant Counsel | Francis Xavier SC, Disa Sim, David Isidore Tan Huang Loong, Kristin Ng (Rajah & Tann LLP) |
Published date | 10 October 2020 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Alvin Yeo SC, Lin Weiqi Wendy, Chong Wan Yee Monica, Huang Meizhen Margaret, Kara Quek Tze-Min (WongPartnership LLP) |
Date | 08 October 2020 |
Hearing Date | 09 September 2020 |
In
This case was transferred from the High Court to the Singapore International Commercial Court (“
At the outset, two issues need to be determined.
First, there is the question of the 20% discount on account of the alleged breach of ORC 559. These proceedings are not the appropriate forum for dealing with any alleged infraction of ORC 559. In particular, ORC 559 permitted the parties to publish details about the relevant arbitrations where “such disclosure ... falls within an exception to the obligation of confidentiality in arbitration under Singapore law”. According to the Defendants, any disclosure that they made fell squarely within an exception to the obligation of confidentiality under Singapore’s arbitration law. This court has not investigated the circumstances of the relevant incident. If the Plaintiffs are of the view that there has been a breach of ORC 559 which needs to be sanctioned in some way, they should take out an appropriate summons for that purpose.
Second, there is a difference between the parties on the proper construction of the Deputy Registrar’s order of 14 February 2020. The Defendants read the order as leaving it to me to determine the extent to which, following transfer to the SICC, Appendix G should (if at all) continue to apply to pre- and post-transfer costs incurred by the parties. The Plaintiffs, on the other hand, compare the order with the equivalent order made in
I am not persuaded of the correctness of the Plaintiffs’ reading of the transfer order in this case. I accept that the absence of the word “all” in the order introduces an element of ambiguity, so that the Plaintiffs’ reading of the Deputy Registrar’s order is a plausible construction. But, on balance, it seems to me that the effect which the Deputy Registrar intended by the order here is precisely the same as that identified in
There is nothing to indicate that, by his transfer order, the Deputy Registrar favoured the Plaintiffs’ view as opposed to that of the Defendants. This is hardly surprising. Given the sharp difference between the parties on the cost implications of a transfer, the Deputy Registrar would more logically and naturally have left the matter to me as the SICC judge assigned to hear the case to determine the question. In other words, seen in its factual context, the transfer order here did not decide whether Appendix G should apply to pre- or post-transfer costs or both, but left it to me to determine the appropriate scope for the application of Appendix G pre- and post-transfer. In any given case (not necessarily just a case relating to an arbitral award), where a party manages to persuade the registrar hearing a transfer application to direct that Appendix G is to apply in whole or part to the costs of the proceedings notwithstanding a transfer, the registrar will make this clear in his or her transfer order. A recent example (albeit not in respect of proceedings relating to an arbitral award) was the transfer order mentioned in
In their respective submissions, both parties refer to what I said in
[I]n the circumstances of this case, I doubt that Appendix G can be of real assistance even as a rough-and-ready guide on the appropriate magnitude of costs. There are two reasons for this. First, as the Defendant points out, in contrast to what was highlighted in
BXS v BXT (Costs) at [14], there has been no...
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