Fullerton Healthcare Group Pte Ltd v Kwok & Kwok Pte Ltd and another
| Jurisdiction | Singapore |
| Judge | Lim Wen Juin |
| Judgment Date | 06 February 2020 |
| Neutral Citation | [2020] SGDC 30 |
| Court | District Court (Singapore) |
| Docket Number | District Court Summons No 4207 of 2019 in District Court Suit No 857 of 2017 |
| Year | 2020 |
| Published date | 07 October 2020 |
| Hearing Date | 06 January 2020,21 November 2019 |
| Plaintiff Counsel | Oh Sheng Loong (Hu ShengLong) and Liu Guiliang (WongPartnership LLP) |
| Defendant Counsel | Wong En Hui, Charis (Covenant Chambers LLC) |
| Subject Matter | Civil Procedure,Production of documents,Documents referred to in lists of documents,Whether unreasonable to delay production for inspection to a later time |
| Citation | [2020] SGDC 30 |
This was the defendants’ application for an order that the plaintiff produce within seven days the documents set out in its list of documents dated 12 April 2019 for the defendants’ inspection. I declined to grant the order sought. I ordered instead that the defendants’ inspection of the documents take place at a later time, that is, at the same time that the plaintiff inspects the documents that I ordered the defendants to disclose pursuant to an application for specific discovery made by the plaintiff. I publish now my reasons for deciding so because in reaching my decision I distinguished two registrars’ decisions from the High Court that appeared at first glance to compel the making of the order sought by the defendants. These High Court decisions are
The undisputed background facts are these. The plaintiff is in the business of providing healthcare management services. The first defendant operates a clinic offering medical services. The second defendant is a medical doctor who provides medical services at that clinic. He is also a director and shareholder of the first defendant. Around 13 April 2012 the plaintiff and the first defendant agreed that the first defendant would provide clinical outpatient services to employees or members of the plaintiff’s corporate clients (“Patients”) and the plaintiff would pay the first defendant for those services. Between 13 April 2012 and 23 September 2016 the first defendant submitted thousands of claims for payment from the plaintiff in respect of services provided to Patients pursuant to the parties’ agreement. The plaintiff made payment to the first defendant on some of these claims.
The plaintiff now alleges in this action that an unknown number of the claims submitted by the first defendant were in fact “false and fictitious claims” for “consultations that never occurred, medication that were never dispensed, and/or services that were never provided”. The plaintiff seeks to recover the sums that it paid out on the allegedly false and fictitious claims. The defendants deny the allegations and say that all the claims that they submitted “were for genuine consultations, medicine that were dispensed and/or services that were provided”. The first defendant also seeks, by way of counterclaim, payment of claims that it submitted to the plaintiff that remain unpaid.
The parties went through the process of general discovery and filed their lists of documents on 15 April 2019 (the plaintiff’s list was dated 12 April 2019). Thereafter the parties’ solicitors exchanged correspondence on matters of discovery and inspection, as follows. On 4 September 2019 the defendants’ solicitors wrote to the plaintiff’s solicitors asking for soft copies of the documents in the plaintiff’s list of documents in lieu of inspection. On 19 September 2019 the plaintiff’s solicitors wrote to the defendants’ solicitors alleging, among other things, that the defendants had failed to give discovery of the medical records of certain named Patients who had visited the first defendant’s clinic. The defendants’ solicitors replied on 24 September 2019 reiterating the request for soft copies of the plaintiff’s documents, and when the plaintiff’s solicitors did not respond to this the request was repeated once more in a letter dated 2 October 2019. The plaintiff’s solicitors replied on 11 October 2019. They alleged in this letter that the defendants had failed to give discovery of the medical records of at least 399 named Patients who had visited the first defendant’s clinic. The plaintiff’s solicitors proposed providing the defendants with the soft copies they had requested only after the defendants had given discovery of these allegedly undisclosed medical records.
Dissatisfied with the proposal made by the plaintiff’s solicitors, the defendants filed this application on 25 October 2019 seeking an order that the plaintiff produce within seven days the documents in its list of documents for their inspection. I first heard the application on 21 November 2019 and adjourned it at the plaintiff’s request despite the defendants’ objections. On 3 December 2019 the plaintiff filed an application by way of District Court Summons No. 4711 of 2019 for an order that the defendants give specific discovery of the medical records of the 399 Patients named in the letter from its solicitors dated 11 October 2019. I heard that application for specific discovery together with this application on 6 January 2020.
The defendants made this application pursuant to O 24 r 11 of the Rules of Court (Cap 322, R 5) read with O 24 r 9. The court is empowered by O 24 r 11(1) to make orders for production of documents for inspection, but that power is expressly subject to O 24 r 13(1), which provides that no such order shall be made unless it passes a test of necessity: the order must be “necessary either for disposing fairly of the cause or matter or for...
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