Chandra Winata Lie v Citibank NA
Judge | Vinodh Coomaraswamy J |
Judgment Date | 03 December 2014 |
Neutral Citation | [2014] SGHC 259 |
Subject Matter | Pleadings,Civil procedure,Striking out |
Docket Number | Suit No 370 of 2013 (Registrar’s Appeal Nos 407 and 412 of 2013) |
Year | 2014 |
Published date | 16 February 2015 |
Citation | [2014] SGHC 259 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Mr Eddee Ng, Mr Michael Ng and Ms Alcina Chew (Tan Kok Quan Partnership) |
Court | High Court (Singapore) |
Defendant Counsel | Mr Hri Kumar Nair SC and Ms Uni Khng (Drew & Napier LLC) |
Hearing Date | 20 January 2014,11 March 2014 |
A principal suspects that he did not authorise his agent to enter into certain transactions on his behalf, but his memory does not allow him to be certain that the agent acted without his authority. In his suit against the agent, the principal therefore stops short of asserting positively that he did not authorise the agent’s acts. Instead, he invites the court to draw from the surrounding circumstances the inference that the agent acted without his authority.
Do the principles of pleading permit the principal to plead his claim against his agent in this way? The Assistant Registrar held that they do not. He rejected the principal’s attempt to amend his pleadings and struck out this portion of the principal’s claim. I agreed with the Assistant Registrar and dismissed the principal’s appeal. There is to be a further appeal to the Court of Appeal. I therefore set out the reasons for my decision.
The background The parties The defendant is a well-known international bank. Through its private banking arm in Singapore, it provides wealth management services for high net worth individuals resident in Singapore and in the region. The plaintiff is one such high net worth individual. He resides in Indonesia. He opened, maintained and operated
It is common ground that under the contract between the plaintiff and the defendant, all three of his accounts were advisory accounts. In other words, these accounts were not discretionary accounts: the plaintiff did not grant to the defendant any discretion to enter into a transaction on any of these accounts without his specific authority for each such transaction. Both parties accept also that the defendant was not contractually obliged to obtain the plaintiff’s authority for any given transaction in writing and was entitled to act on his authority even if given orally.
The defendant’s practice in dealing with the plaintiff was to obtain his oral authority to transact on his behalf. It followed up by sending him two documents either shortly before or shortly after executing the transaction he had authorised.
It is common ground that, because the defendant was contractually entitled to act on the plaintiff's oral authority, neither the absence of a trade confirmation for a particular transaction nor the plaintiff’s failure to countersign a trade confirmation for a particular transaction is capable of suggesting that the defendant had no authority to enter into that particular transaction.
All of the plaintiff’s mail relating to his three accounts was held by the defendant at its office in Singapore for him to collect personally – as he did from time to time – pursuant to a hold-mail agreement between the parties. The mail so held included tailored investment proposals, trade confirmations and monthly statements intended for the plaintiff arising from his accounts.
Between May 2007 and October 2008, the plaintiff’s accounts saw significant activity in fairly sophisticated derivatives transactions in foreign exchange and equities. These transactions entailed substantial potential liability for the plaintiff. That potential liability became a reality when, as a result of the financial crisis of 2008/2009, the plaintiff’s accounts recorded significant losses on transactions entered into in or after March 2008.
The plaintiff’s case in these proceedings is that the defendant is liable to compensate him for those losses.
The plaintiff seeks documents voluntarily from the defendant In March 2010, the plaintiff engaged an expert with a view to commencing suit against the defendant to recover compensation for these losses. The expert analysed the documents in the plaintiff’s possession arising from his accounts. In August 2010, the expert informed the plaintiff that he had discovered a number of transactions on the plaintiff’s accounts which could not be matched to a trade confirmation.
The defendant initially took the position that it had already furnished all trade confirmations to the plaintiff.
Mr Eddee Ng of Tan Kok Quan Partnership (“TKQP”) represents the plaintiff. TKQP wrote to the defendant in July 2011.
Mr Hri Kumar SC of Drew & Napier LLC (“D&N”) represents the defendant. D&N’s response to TKQP’s letter rejected the plaintiff’s allegation of unauthorised trading. It informed TKQP that the defendant declined to disclose voluntarily the tape recordings and call reports for the 14 transactions because they were the defendant’s property and because the defendant had no obligation to supply copies to the plaintiff. D&N did, however, enclose trade confirmations for 13 of the 14 transactions which TKQP had listed in its July 2011 letter. None of these 13 trade confirmations had been countersigned by the plaintiff.
The plaintiff seeks pre-action discovery from the defendant Not satisfied with the defendant’s disclosure, the plaintiff applied in December 2011 for pre-action discovery against the defendant. As he explained in his affidavit in support of this application:
In or around August 2010, as the [plaintiff's] expert was studying the statements, he highlighted to me that there were many trades … which he could not match to trade confirmations sent to me by the Defendant. Unfortunately, I could not recall either giving the Defendant instructions to enter into or authorising many of these transactions. …
The plaintiff’s application for pre-action discovery failed. At the primary hearing, the Assistant Registrar held that whether the plaintiff did or did not authorise the 14 transactions identified was a matter within the plaintiff’s own knowledge. She was therefore of the view that he was seeking pre-action discovery not because the documents he sought were necessary for him to know whether he had a claim against the defendant for unauthorised trading but because he wanted, impermissibly, to assess the chances of such a claim succeeding.
On 23 April 2013, the plaintiff commenced this suit against the defendant. His original claim comprises his statement of claim filed on 23 April 2013 as amended on 14 August 2013. It asserts that the defendant is...
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