Karuppiah Ravichandran v GDS Engineering Pte Ltd and Another

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Kan Ting Chiu J
• Judgment Date: 19 May 2009
• Neutral Citation: [2009] SGHC 119
• Docket Number: Originating Summons No 642 of 2008
• Date: 19 May 2009
• Year: 2009
• Published date: 20 May 2009
• Plaintiff Counsel: Kamala Dewi d/o Poologanathan and Seetha Lkshmi P S Krrishnan (Yeo Perumal Mohideen Law Corporation)
• Citation: [2009] SGHC 119
• Defendant Counsel: Thomas Lei (Lawrence Chua & Partners)
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Commissioner for labour,Whether Commissioner had failed to apply presumption under s 3(6) Workmen's Compensation Act (Cap 354, 1998 Rev Ed),Appeal against Commissioner's decision,Employment Law,Section 29(2A) Workmen's Compensation Act (Cap 354, 1998 Rev Ed),Whether there was a substantial question of law

19 May 2009 Judgment reserved.

Kan Ting Chiu J:

1 The applicant is seeking to have the decision of the Commissioner for Labour against him set aside or reversed. The applicant had made a claim for compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act (Cap 354 1998 Rev Ed)) for back injuries he said he had sustained on 26 April 2006 while he was lifting a motor pump in the course of his work. (This Act was amended and renamed the Work Injury Compensation Act on 1 April 2008. I shall refer to the Act in its pre and post amendment forms as “the Act”.)

2 The applicant’s employers are liable to pay compensation under s 3(1) of the Act:

If in any employment personal injury by accident arising out of and in the course of the employment is caused to an employee, his employer shall be liable to pay compensation in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

3 The applicant’s claim came on for hearing before a Commissioner of Labour (“Commissioner”) between 29 August 2007 and 8 May 2008. After hearing the evidence of the applicant, a co-worker and their supervisor who were present at the time of the alleged accident and two doctors who saw the applicant, the Commissioner found that the applicant had not incurred the back injuries out of and in the course of his employment.

4 The applicant was not satisfied with the Commissioner’s decision and applied to have it set aside or reversed. However, his right of appeal against the Commissioner is limited under s 29(2A) of the Act which states:

No appeal shall lie against any order [of the Commissioner of Labour] unless a substantial question of law is involved in the appeal and the amount in dispute is not less than $1,000.

5 In the application, the applicant stated that substantial questions of law were involved in this matter and set out a list of 23 criticisms and disagreements the applicant had against the Commissioner’s findings. Matters came into sharper focus when the application came on for hearing, and in the written closing submissions, the grounds were narrowed to:

a)	The Commissioner had failed to apply the presumption under Section 3(6) of [the Act] and as such had failed to shift the burden of proof onto the Respondents as required under Section 3(6) of [the Act]; and
b)	The Commissioner had failed to decide the case based on the evidence tendered in Court and had come to her decision based on evidences [sic] not tendered in Court.

6 Section 3(6) states:

For the purposes of this Act, an accident arising in the course of an employee’s employment shall be deemed, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to have arisen out of that employment.

7 The effect of s 29(2A) is that the decisions of the Commissioner are not appealable unless:

(i) a substantial question of law is involved; and

(ii) the amount in dispute is not less than $1,000.

(In this application, there was no issue with regard to the second requirement.)

8 This provision reflects a policy decision that work injury claims are to be heard by the Commissioners and that their decisions are final, save where substantial serious questions of law are involved, and even then, only in cases where the amount in dispute is not less than $1,000.

9 Decisions of the Commissioner are not to be examined as though they are decisions of a court of law. Their hearings are not conducted as hearings in courts of law. The rules of evidence do not have to be applied strictly; reg 16 of the Workmen’s Compensation Regulations which was in force till 1 April 2008, and reg 9 of the Work Injury Compensation Regulations 2008, which came into force on the same day, state that:

The Evidence Act (Cap. 97) and any other law relating to evidence need not be followed strictly in all proceedings before the Commissioner.

10 What is a “substantial question of law” that is needed under s 29(2A)? Counsel for the employers referred to the decision of the Indian Supreme Court in Kondiba Dagadu Kadam v Savitribai Sopangujar & Ors [1999] 2 LRI 617. This was not a work injury claim. It was a claim for specific performance arising from a disposal of agreement for the sale of land. When the claim was dismissed, the plaintiff appealed against the decision and the appeal (the first appeal) was allowed. However, the defendant then lodged an appeal (the second appeal) to the High Court, which reviewed the evidence and interfered with the findings of the first appellate court. The matter then went before the Supreme Court on the question whether the High Court should have heard the second appeal. The right to appeal to the High Court was governed by s 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908:

Second appeal. – (1) Save as otherwise expressly provided in the body of this Code or by any other law for time being in force, an appeal shall lie to the High Court from every decree passed in appeal by any Court subordinate to the High Court, if the High Court is satisfied that the case involves a substantial question of law.

11 The Supreme Court set aside the decision of the High Court and restored the decision of the first appellate court. In the judgment delivered by R P Sethi J, he quoted with approval in [3] a passage from another decision of the Supreme Court in Sir Chunilal V Mehta & Sons Ltd v Century Spinning and Manufacturing Co Ltd AIR 1962 SC 1314; [1962] Supp 3:

The proper test for determining whether a question of law raised in the case is substantial would, in our opinion, be whether it is of general public importance or whether it directly and substantially affects the rights of the parties and if so whether it is either an open question in the sense that it is not finally settled by this court or by the Privy Council or by the Federal Court or is not free from difficulty or calls for discussion of alternative views. If the question is settled by the highest court or the general principles to be applied in determining the question are well settled and there is a mere question of applying those principles or that the plea raised is palpably absurd, the question would not be a substantial question of law.

and at [5] Sethi J added that:

If the question of law termed as substantial question, stands already decided by a larger bench of the High Court concerned or by the Privy Council or by the Federal Court or by the Supreme Court, its merely wrong application on the facts of the case would not be termed to be a substantial question of law. Where a point of...