Ho Yiu v Lim Peng Seng

JurisdictionSingapore
JudgeJudith Prakash J
Judgment Date27 September 2004
Neutral Citation[2004] SGHC 218
Docket NumberSuit No 1604 of 2001 (Registrar's Appeals Nos 38 and 40 of 2004)
Date27 September 2004
Published date05 October 2004
Year2004
Plaintiff CounselRamasamy Chettiar (ACIES Law Corporation)
Citation[2004] SGHC 218
Defendant CounselBalu Rao (B Rao and K S Rajah) and Kwok-Chern Yew Tee (Lawrence Chua and Partners)
CourtHigh Court (Singapore)
Subject MatterPlaintiff injured in accident caused by defendant,Assessment,Whether awards for loss of earnings and future medical expenses should be varied,Damages,Damages assessed by assistant registrar

27 September 2004

Judgment reserved.

Judith Prakash J:

Introduction

1 On 7 November 2000, Mr Ho Yiu’s life changed forever. A successful art director for a design house, he was then a young man with a bright future. He earned $6,000 a month and was looking forward to a well-deserved increment at the end of the month. Instead, because of the injuries he received that day in a traffic accident caused by the defendant, when the end of the month arrived, Mr Ho was jobless and in pain. Three years after the accident, when the damages sustained by Mr Ho were being assessed in this action commenced by him, he was still jobless and, in some respects, his physical situation had deteriorated. It was clear by then that little further improvement could be expected. Mr Ho was no longer capable of functioning as an art director and his quality of life had permanently changed for the worse.

2 In the course of the assessment proceedings, the parties were able to agree that Mr Ho, the plaintiff, should receive the following:

(a) pre-trial medical expenses $60,411.66

(b) pre-trial transport expenses $4,575

(c) pain and suffering $75,000

They were not able to agree on Mr Ho’s claims in respect of loss of earnings (both pre-trial and post-trial), his future medical expenses and his future transport expenses. They are still at odds on these points. The defendant has appealed against the awards made in respect of Mr Ho’s loss of earnings, while Mr Ho, in addition to appealing against those awards as well, has asked for an additional sum to be awarded to him in respect of his future medical expenses.

The plaintiff’s background and career

3 Mr Ho was born in July 1970. From the time he was in secondary school, he did freelance work as a graphic designer and illustrator. In 1991, after completing national service, he worked with several graphic design firms as a designer. In 1992, Mr Ho took up a course in product design at the Temasek Polytechnic and he obtained his diploma in this subject in 1995. He then went to Curtin University in Western Australia where he pursued the Bachelor of Applied Science (Interior Design) course for one year before transferring to the University of Technology, Sydney, to become a full time student in the Master of Design course. In February 1998, after completing 12 out of the 13 units of this course, Mr Ho gave up his studies because he had obtained an art director’s job with a publication company in Singapore.

4 In May 1999, Mr Ho changed jobs. He joined Grace Communications Pte Ltd (“GCPL”) as an art director. His initial salary was $3,000 a month but on completion of his probation in November 1999, his gross salary was increased to $6,000 per month. He also received $300 a month as transport allowance. He was the only art director at GCPL and was the head of the graphics department, leading a team of designers. After he joined GCPL, it diversified from being a design house to doing multi-media work. Mr Ho had considerable computer experience and knowledge, and he was instrumental in the shift from pure paper-based work to multi-media productions. During the time he was with GCPL, Mr Ho worked on projects commissioned by the Ministry of Information and the Arts, the Singapore Kindness Movement, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Defence, the Ministry of Education and the Singapore Police Force, among other clients. Apart from producing annual reports and conference publications, he also produced multi-media shows and multi-media commemorative CD-ROMs.

5 Before 1999, the gross annual revenue of GCPL was $1.9m. According to Mr Alfred Yeo Chai Phuan, the managing director and owner of GCPL, the gross revenue of the company increased to $4.3m for the period between May 1999 and April 2000. Mr Yeo testified that a significant portion of the increase was attributable to Mr Ho’s efforts. Mr Yeo also stated that Mr Ho was due for an increment in November 2000 and his salary would have been increased to $8,000 had it not been for the accident. Unfortunately, the injuries sustained by Mr Ho resulted in disabilities that made him unfit to work as an art director and Mr Yeo had no alternative but to terminate Mr Ho’s employment.

6 Between the accident and the assessment hearing, Mr Ho was not employed. His evidence was that he was no longer able to function as an art director, the only occupation for which he had been adequately trained. Between late June 2001 and early January 2002, he had applied for many jobs that were outside the design industry but had not been successful in getting employment. After January 2002, when his daughter was born, he and his wife decided that he should stay home and look after the baby, and that his wife should seek employment since she had a better chance of being hired.

The plaintiff’s medical condition

7 The injuries that Mr Ho sustained as a result of the accident were:

(a) fractured nasal septum, for which he underwent surgery;

(b) soft tissue injury to the cervical spine;

(c) contusion to the upper left abdomen and left costal margin (seat belt injury);

(d) laceration of the left leg;

(e) right periorbital contusion and subconjunctival haemorrhages;

(f) closed head injury with post-concussion headaches, post-traumatic stress disorder and visual impairment in the form of unco-ordinated eye movements and double vision.

8 Mr Ho’s position was that as a result of the injuries he had been severely disabled. First, since the accident, he had had daily headaches. In addition, the pain in and around his eyes would be severely exacerbated if he attempted to get by without using prismatic spectacles. He also continued to have pain in his jaw muscles.

9 Second, Mr Ho had double vision, despite using prism lenses, caused by a residual fusional range deficit. After the accident, the fusion mechanisms in his brain did not operate in the normal way to fuse the images recorded by each eye. The prism lenses prescribed by the specialist helped reduce the double vision but did not eliminate it. Doctors called by Mr Ho testified that he had sustained brain damage that led to the deficit, although an expert called by the defendant disagreed with this diagnosis. Mr Ho testified that his double vision was in all directions and the prism lenses corrected mainly the primary or straight gaze. He also suffered from impaired judgment of depth and distances and impaired perception of subtle shades of colour. There was also evidence that the angle of his squint was worsening. All this made it impossible for him to continue as an art or creative director.

10 Mr Ho also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. He was anxious, depressed and easily irritated. He was receiving treatment from a psychiatrist for this condition.

11 Finally, Mr Ho experienced pain in his neck and stiffness of the neck. These conditions radiated to his spine and lower back and the range of motion of his neck was restricted.

The appeal

Loss of pre-trial earnings

12 The plaintiff’s position at the assessment was that if it had not been for the accident, his monthly salary would have been increased to $8,000 in November 2000, to $10,000 in November 2001 and to $12,000 in November 2002. Mr Alfred Yeo gave evidence in support of these projections. The assistant registrar did not accept these figures. She did not consider Mr Yeo a reliable witness. He had given evidence on two occasions, and on the second occasion, he had given the plaintiff much more credit for the growth of GCPL’s business than he had done previously. She also found it difficult to accept that the plaintiff was responsible for the rapid expansion of the business. This was because, first, he had been given the bonus of a normal employee in 2000, second, his employment had been terminated less than a month after the accident, and third, no other employment had been offered to him as one might have expected had he been such a key and valued employee. There was also evidence that GCPL continued to flourish after the plaintiff left it. The assistant registrar noted that the plaintiff’s expert witnesses paid their designers much less than what the plaintiff had been paid. She also relied on one of the defendant’s expert witnesses, one Mr Ian Richard Barnes, who considered that the plaintiff should be paid $4,000 to $5,000 a month on the basis of his quality of work. The assistant registrar also found guidance from the median and mean salaries of creative directors that were published in the Report on Wages in Singapore 2002, and the fluctuating nature of the economy and the labour market. On that basis, she assessed that if it had not been for the accident, the plaintiff would have earned an average of $6,500 per month plus Central Provident Fund (“CPF”) contributions from 1 December 2000 up to the date of the hearing.

13 Both parties were dissatisfied with this assessment. The defendant’s position was that during the period before the trial, the plaintiff would not have earned anything more than what he had earned at the time of the accident. In his written submissions, counsel put this figure at $5,400 per month, but in the course of the submissions, he realised that this figure was based on a misinterpretation of the evidence and that the plaintiff had actually earned $6,000 a month at the time of the accident. In any case, he submitted that the plaintiff’s earnings would not have increased beyond that figure because:

(a) between December 2000 and the end of 2003, there had been an economic downturn and, as Mr Yeo himself had agreed, this had affected the advertising industry;

(b) the plaintiff’s employer, GCPL, had stopped giving increments during this period and a wage freeze was in place from July 2002. In fact, by the middle of 2003, the company had closed down;

(c) there was no evidence to suggest that the plaintiff’s monthly income would have gone up from $6,000 to $6,500, as at $6,000 the plaintiff’s salary was beyond the norm,...

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6 cases
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    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 28 June 2013
    ...SGHC 27 (refd) Cookson v Knowles [1979] AC 556 (refd) Dylan Simon v Manuel Paul Helmot [2012] UKPC 5 (refd) Ho Yiu v Lim Peng Seng [2004] 4 SLR (R) 675; [2004] 4 SLR 675 (refd) Koh Chai Kwang v Teo Ai Ling [2011] 3 SLR 610 (folld) Lai Wee Lian v Singapore Bus Service (1978) Ltd [1983-1984] ......
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    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 28 June 2013
    ...with differing multiplicands was appropriate on the facts of this case and is consistent with authority (see Ho Yiu v Lim Peng Seng [2004] 4 SLR(R) 675 at [23]; Balanalagirisamy Gowri Rajeswari and another (administrators of the estate of Radhakrishnan Hari Babu, deceased) v Wong Si Wah [20......
  • Ng Chee Wee v Tan Chin Seng
    • Singapore
    • High Court (Singapore)
    • 28 February 2013
    ...if he had successfully undergone the surgery. This finding was not disturbed on appeal to the High Court (see Ho Yiu v Lim Peng Seng [2004] 4 SLR(R) 675). The same issue also came before the High Court in Karuppiah Nirmala v Singapore Bus Services Ltd [2002] 1 SLR(R) 934 (“Karuppiah”). In K......
  • Quek Yen Fei Kenneth (by his litigation representative Pang Choy Chun) v Yeo Chye Huat and another appeal
    • Singapore
    • Court of Appeal (Singapore)
    • 24 April 2017
    ...(as was contended by counsel for the plaintiff (but which was rejected) in the Singapore High Court decision of Ho Yiu v Lim Peng Seng [2004] 4 SLR(R) 675 at [34]). In our view, reason and logic suggest that the longer the expected period of future loss, the greater the discount amount shou......
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