Chua Soo Lee and Another v City Council of Singapore

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chua F A J
• Judgment Date: 18 April 1967
• Neutral Citation: [1967] SGFC 9
• Citation: [1967] SGFC 9
• Date: 18 April 1967
• Year: 1967
• Plaintiff Counsel: Harry L Wee and Lim Chor Pee (Chor Pee & Hin Hiong)
• Docket Number: Civil Appeal No Y50 of 1966
• Defendant Counsel: David Chelliah (Drew & Napier)
• Court: Federal Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 19 September 2003

This action has reached perhaps a very unfortunate stage. It was commenced in the name of Wong Chow Dow against the city council of Singapore in April 1962 being an action for damages for breach of contract.

The writ was taken out on 2 April 1962 but it was not served at all and towards the end of March the following year before the period of 12 months allowed for the service of the writ would lapse, an application was made to renew the writ for a further period of six months. That was necessarily an ex parte application which was heard on 29 March 1963 when an order was made to renew this yet unserved writ.

The factual position however as regards the plaintiff was that he had died a few months earlier on 10 November 1962. I will deal with the effect of that in relation to the writ at a later stage.

Having obtained an order to renew the writ, the writ was served, just before the final expiry date, on the defendants, the city council of Singapore, for the first time on 28 September 1963. The defendant thereupon filed a memorandum of conditional appearance on 4 October 1963 and on 11 October 1963 applied to the High Court to set aside the writ. This application was made because the order obtained on the original...