Keppel Singmarine Dockyard Pte Ltd v Ng Chan Teng

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chao Hick Tin JA
• Judgment Date: 10 March 2010
• Neutral Citation: [2010] SGCA 10
• Citation: [2010] SGCA 10
• Docket Number: Civil Appeal No 12 of 2009 (Originating Summons No 556 of 2008)
• Date: 10 March 2010
• Hearing Date: 31 July 2009
• Plaintiff Counsel: Anparasan s/o Kamachi and Sharon Lin Hui Yin (KhattarWong)
• Published date: 25 March 2010
• Defendant Counsel: Namasivayam Srinivasan (Hoh Law Corporation)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Year: 2010

V K Rajah JA (delivering the grounds of decision of the court): Introduction

This appeal arose from the decision of a High Court judge (“the Judge”) in Originating Summons No 556 of 2008 (see Ng Chan Teng v Keppel Singmarine Dockyard Pte Ltd [2009] 2 SLR(R) 647 (“the GD”)). The Judge had allowed an application by the plaintiff/respondent, Ng Chan Teng, made pursuant to s 54B of the Subordinate Courts Act (Cap 321, 2007 Rev Ed) (“SCA”) read with s 18 and para 10 of the First Schedule of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Cap 322, 2007 Rev Ed), to transfer his action against the appellant, Keppel Singmarine Dockyard Pte Ltd, from the District Court to the High Court.

Section 54B of the SCA reads as follows:

General power to transfer from subordinate courts to High Court 54B. —(1) Where it appears to the High Court, on the application of a party to any civil proceedings pending in a subordinate court, that the proceedings, by reason of its involving some important question of law, or being a test case, or for any other sufficient reason, should be tried in the High Court, it may order the proceedings to be transferred to the High Court.

(2) An order under subsection (1) may be made on such terms as the court sees fit.

[emphasis added]

At the conclusion of the hearing before us, we allowed the appeal and set aside the Judge’s order. We now give the reasons for our decision.

Background

The respondent, a shipwright, was a former employee of the appellant. On 13 November 2001, the respondent was involved in an industrial accident whilst working on the premises of the appellant. He sustained severe injuries to his right arm as a consequence. The respondent subsequently instituted legal proceedings in the District Court against the appellant to recover compensation for his personal injuries and for consequential losses suffered. The respondent alleged, in the proceedings, that his injuries were caused by the negligence and/or breach of statutory duty (under the Factories Act (Cap 104, 1998 Rev Ed)) on the part of the appellant.

Despite the fact that the respondent’s former solicitors had quantified the total damages claimed by the respondent to be in the region of $725,000, a sum which far exceeded the jurisdictional limit of the District Court (which was capped at $250,000: see s 2 of the SCA), no steps were taken by them to transfer the matter from the District Court to the High Court. Then, without ever directly addressing the issue of the District Court’s jurisdiction for the quantum being claimed, on 7 May 2004, the parties entered a consent interlocutory judgment and agreed to a 70%:30% split in liability (in favour of the respondent), with damages to be assessed.

On 25 May 2006, the respondent appointed his present solicitors. They immediately recognised that his claim exceeded the District Court’s jurisdictional limit. However, in the light of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Ricky Charles s/o Gabriel Thanabalan v Chua Boon Yeow [2003] 1 SLR(R) 511 (“Ricky Charles”), they did not apply to transfer the action to the High Court. We will elaborate on this point below at [8].

Nevertheless, on 5 April 2007, the respondent brought an application before the District Court, pursuant to O 14 r 12 of the Rules of Court (Cap 322, R 5, 2006 Rev Ed), to determine whether the deduction for contributory negligence was to be made from the District Court limit or from the actual damages assessed. This issue was eventually resolved by this court on 20 February 2008: see Keppel Singmarine Dockyard Pte Ltd v Ng Chan Teng [2008] 2 SLR(R) 839 (“Keppel Singmarine Dockyard”).

The decision in Keppel Singmarine Dockyard

The present application was apparently filed as a result of certain observations made by this court in Keppel Singmarine Dockyard. After determining that the deduction for contributory negligence ought to be made from the actual damages assessed and not from the District Court limit, this court went on to make known its views in relation to the decision in Ricky Charles. To facilitate understanding, we now briefly recapitulate the salient points that were decided in that matter. In Ricky Charles, the appellant commenced an action in the District Court against the respondent for damages for personal injuries. The parties eventually agreed to enter a consent interlocutory judgment on liability leaving damages to be assessed by the court. Subsequently, the appellant filed an application pursuant to s 38 (as it was then, and which was the predecessor to the current s 54B) of the SCA to transfer the proceedings from the District Court to the High Court, on the ground that his damages might exceed the jurisdictional limit of the District Court. The High Court dismissed the application, and its decision was affirmed by the Court of Appeal, which held at [16]:

We did not think that it is within the spirit of [s 38], which requires the matter to be “one which should be tried in the High Court”, to permit a transfer of a case where interlocutory judgment had already been obtained in the District Court, leaving only the quantum to be assessed, and what was sought to be transferred to the High Court was merely the assessment of damages. This would be to truncate a single proceeding and blur the distinction between the two jurisdictions. By obtaining an interlocutory judgment in the District Court, the appellant had affirmed his claim within the jurisdiction of that court.

[emphasis in original in italics; emphasis added in bold]

With regard to the above, this court in Keppel Singmarine Dockyard noted (at [32]–[39]) that: 32 In our view, the specific holding in Ricky Charles that an action commenced in the District Court may not be transferred to the High Court where interlocutory judgment has already been entered in the former court should not be followed as it proceeded on the wrong assumptions. First, the “affirmation of jurisdiction” approach taken by the Court of Appeal in that case (at [16]) plainly extends only to the limit of the claim then being sought, which limit is premised purely on an existing expectation at that point in time by the plaintiff's counsel as to the quantum potentially recoverable. The entering of an interlocutory judgment is not a legal affirmation of a lower court’s jurisdiction over the plaintiff's claim for the entire duration of the proceedings, in the course of which the plaintiff may amend his claim vis-à-vis, inter...