Law Society of Singapore v Hanam, Andrew John

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Tay Yong Kwang JCA
• Judgment Date: 10 May 2023
• Neutral Citation: [2023] SGHC 132
• Docket Number: Originating Application No 5 of 2022
• Hearing Date: 25 January 2023
• Year: 2023
• Citation: [2023] SGHC 132
• Plaintiff Counsel: Shobna Chandran, Ng Jie Zhen Amy (Huang Jiezhen Amy), Tan Phoebe and Thaddaeus Aaron Tan Yong Zhong (Tan Rajah & Cheah)
• Defendant Counsel: Andrew John Hanam (Andrew LLC)
• Subject Matter: Legal Profession,Disciplinary proceedings,Professional conduct,Breach,Improper conduct or practice,Show cause action
• Published date: 10 May 2023

Belinda Ang Saw Ean JCA (delivering the judgment of the court): Introduction

Originating Application No 5 of 2022 (“OA 5”) is an application by the Law Society of Singapore (the “Law Society”) made under s 98 of the Legal Profession Act 1966 (2020 Rev Ed) (the “LPA”) for the respondent, Mr Andrew John Hanam (“Mr Hanam”), to be sanctioned under s 83(1) of the LPA following a complaint made by Mr Krishnamoorthy Pugazendhi (“Mr Pugazendhi”), the sole director and shareholder of P&P Engineering & Construction Pte Ltd (“P&P”), whereupon a disciplinary tribunal (the “DT”) was duly convened. Several charges were subsequently preferred against Mr Hanam under s 83(2) of the LPA. The DT found that two of the primary charges alleging that Mr Hanam had breached rr 17(2)(e) and 17(2)(f) of the Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules 2015 (“PCR”) were made out and that cause of sufficient gravity for disciplinary action existed in respect of those two primary charges.

Mr Hanam represented P&P in respect of what was a relatively straightforward dispute involving unpaid invoices arising from two subcontracts in a construction project, in which the counterparty subsequently admitted to its liability to make payment on several counts. The proceedings to recover P&P’s unpaid invoices spanned over a period of close to three years involving three separate actions, two in the High Court and one in the State Courts. The misconduct that is in issue before us arose out of Mr Hanam’s handling of P&P’s dispute for unpaid invoices where it is alleged that he had acted in breach of the PCR. The various orders of costs made against P&P in the course of legal proceedings and the reasons for the costs orders speak to demonstrable failures on Mr Hanam’s part to properly evaluate and/or render legal advice to P&P. Other instances of misconduct that gave rise to Mr Hanam’s breaches of the PCR necessarily required him to demonstrate a minimum standard of competence and experience as an advocate and solicitor of 18 years of standing at the material time in rendering legal advice on legal issues, including advising on alternative dispute resolution (“ADR”) options like the adjudication regime under the Building and Construction Industry Security of Payment Act (Cap 30B, 2006 Rev Ed) (“SOPA Adjudication”). We foreshadow here the evidential difficulty Mr Hanam faced before the DT arising from the absence of attendance notes and other contemporaneous records to support the reasonableness of his legal advice including whether appropriate legal experience was brought to bear in the discharge of his role as advocate and solicitor.

We reserved judgment after the oral hearing on 25 January 2023. Having considered the parties’ submissions including the evidence before the DT, we hold that in respect of the two primary charges, due cause has been shown for Mr Hanam to be sanctioned under s 83(1) of the LPA and order that he be suspended for a period of 9 months. We now give our reasons.

The undisputed facts

Mr Hanam was admitted to the roll of Advocates and Solicitors of the Supreme Court of Singapore on 21 March 1998. At the material time during which the following events took place, he was practising with Messrs Andrew LLC.

On 25 November 2016, Mr Hanam was appointed by Mr Pugazendhi to represent his company, P&P, in its dispute with Kori Construction (S) Pte Ltd (“Kori”) in relation to two subcontracts for the construction of the Marina Bay Mass Rapid Transit station. The first subcontract was for the provision of manpower (the “Manpower Subcontract”) and the second was for the supply of steel fabrication works (the “Steel Fabrication Subcontract”) (collectively, the “Subcontracts”). Under the Subcontracts, Kori owed P&P a total sum that was close to $1.5m. As mentioned, the dispute over the Subcontracts resulted in three sets of legal proceedings, namely, HC/S 1255/2016 (“Suit 1255”), DC/DC 1043/2018 (“DC 1043”) and HC/S 1167/2017 (“Suit 1167”).

Throughout the conduct of the litigation on behalf of P&P (ie, over the span of the three suits), Mr Hanam did not keep any attendance notes or timesheets of his meetings and discussions with Mr Pugazendhi.

We set out the chronology of events in the three suits, to provide the necessary background and context to appreciate and assess the DT’s findings on Mr Hanam’s misconduct under the two primary charges, details of which are set out below.

Suit 1255

On 25 November 2016, P&P commenced Suit 1255 against Kori for a claim of $376,344.93 under the Manpower Subcontract and $893,273.66 under the Steel Fabrication Subcontract. These claims were based on invoices that had fallen due as of 25 November 2016 (the “November 2016 Invoices”). Even though Mr Hanam was aware that there were other invoices that would fall due in December 2016 (the “December 2016 Invoices”), he informed Mr Pugazendhi in a letter dated 25 November 2016 that P&P would commence action for the November 2016 Invoices first and that the claim for the December 2016 Invoices would be filed after they became due and payable. Legal proceedings for the December 2016 Invoices were thus commenced separately in December 2017 (ie, Suit 1167). This approach led to two High Court actions.

On 31 January 2017, Kori filed HC/SUM 431/2017 (“SUM 431”) against P&P to compel disclosure of documents referred to in P&P’s Reply and Defence to Counterclaim. On 3 February 2017, Mr Hanam enclosed a copy of SUM 431 in a letter to Mr Pugazendhi and informed him that P&P would be objecting to the application “based on the lack of relevance of the documents”.¹ P&P failed to resist SUM 431 and was ordered to pay costs of $3,200. On 15 February 2017, Mr Hanam advised Mr Pugazendhi to appeal because the “Assistant Registrar was wrong to make the order as we have provided all the documents and the order to further produce is flawed”.² P&P then filed HC/RA 44/2017 (“RA 44”) on 17 February 2017 but failed in the appeal and was ordered to amend its pleadings and pay costs of $2,000.

On 17 October 2017, the trial of Suit 1255 commenced. On that same day, an agreement was reached regarding P&P’s claim under the Manpower Subcontract and one of Kori’s counterclaims (“Suit 1255 Settlement”). Kori agreed to pay $236,731.48 to P&P subject to a reduction of $543.73 on account of Kori’s counterclaim. In total, Kori was to pay P&P a settlement sum of $236,187.75. However, there was no express agreement at the time on the timeframe for Kori to pay the settlement sum. Kori took the position that the sum was payable only at the conclusion of Suit 1255 which proceedings continued in respect of P&P’s claim for the Steel Fabrication Subcontract and Kori’s substantial counterclaim for approximately $719,000 (which was to be set off against a sum of approximately $129,000 that Kori owed to P&P). Kori was able to adopt that position because Mr Hanam had not negotiated for the settlement sum to be paid forthwith or within a reasonable time as part of the settlement agreement.

On 15 November 2017, P&P filed HC/SUM 5237/2017 (“SUM 5237”) for third-party discovery against Taisei Corporation (“Taisei”) for the production of documents. This was after P&P unsuccessfully sought voluntary production of documents from Taisei on 23 October 2017. After Taisei filed an affidavit detailing the costs involved in producing copies of the documents, Mr Hanam advised Mr Pugazendhi to withdraw SUM 5237 and to pay costs to Taisei and Kori. Mr Pugazendhi agreed and P&P was ordered to pay costs of $500 to Kori and $2,300 to Taisei. In respect of the sum of $2,300, Taisei commenced garnishee proceedings against P&P and obtained a garnishee order on 26 March 2018, with parties to attend before the assistant registrar on 9 April 2018 for the show cause proceedings. Mr Hanam then agreed on behalf of P&P on 6 April 2018 to pay Taisei the sum of $1,513.70 for the costs incurred by Taisei in obtaining the garnishee order. This was accepted by Taisei, which appeared on P&P’s behalf at the show cause hearing before the assistant registrar, whereupon a costs order of $1,513.70 was made against P&P.

On 7 December 2017, P&P unsuccessfully applied for leave in HC/SUM 5616/2017 (“SUM 5616”) to call four additional witnesses and was ordered to pay costs of $6,000.

On 23 March 2018, P&P applied in HC/SUM 1394/2018 (“SUM 1394”) for judgment on the Suit 1255 Settlement based on an admission of fact. SUM 1394 was dismissed with costs of $3,700 ordered against P&P on 9 April 2018. On the same day, Mr Hanam updated Mr Pugazendhi by way of letter on the outcome of the application and explained that the assistant registrar agreed with Kori that the Suit 1255 Settlement was not a consent judgment or an admission of fact but a settlement agreement on which the court could not enter judgment on. In that same letter, he also advised Mr Pugazendhi to file a new action against Kori in respect of the Suit 1255 Settlement. This took the form of DC 1043. We digress to highlight that Mr Hanam’s letter did not mention Kori’s position that it would not pay the Suit 1255 Settlement sum before the conclusion of Suit 1255 (see [10] above).

On 31 December 2018, the High Court found largely in favour of P&P in Suit 1255. In short, P&P succeeded in its claim for work done under the Steel Fabrication Subcontract but the judgment also took into account a sum of $137,224.01 comprising the excess steel that Kori had sold to P&P.

DC 1043

On 9 April 2018, P&P sued on the Suit 1255 Settlement and filed DC 1043 for payment of $236,187.75 (see [10] above). This was on the same day that SUM 1394 in Suit 1255 was dismissed (see [13] above).

On 27 July 2018, Kori issued an offer to settle (“OTS”) to P&P, under which Kori offered to pay a settlement sum of $236,187.75 within 14 days of the delivery of the judgment in Suit 1255. P&P did not respond to the OTS.

On 11 January 2019, Kori made payment of...