Lee Tat Development Pte Ltd v MCST Plan No 301
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Judge | Andrew Phang Boon Leong JA,Judith Prakash JA,Tay Yong Kwang JA,Chao Hick Tin SJ,Chan Seng Onn J |
Judgment Date | 17 August 2018 |
Neutral Citation | [2018] SGCA 50 |
Year | 2018 |
Date | 17 August 2018 |
Published date | 12 October 2018 |
Hearing Date | 28 February 2018 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Chelva Rajah SC and Yap En Li (instructed) (Tan Rajah & Cheah), Balasubramaniam Ernest Yogarajah and Bernadette Chen (UniLegal LLC) |
Defendant Counsel | Tan Chee Meng SC, Ngiam Heng Hui Jocelyn and Chia Shi Jin (WongPartnership LLP),Prof Gary Chan (School of Law, Singapore Management University) as amicus curiae. |
Court | Court of Appeal (Singapore) |
Citation | [2018] SGCA 50 |
Docket Number | Civil Appeal No 117 of 2017 |
This is an appeal against the decision of the High Court judge (“the Judge”) in
In fact, the appellant had in 2008 ultimately obtained a decision in its favour with regard to the principal subject matter of their longstanding quarrel, namely, a disputed right of way over a narrow strip of land. Now that there is no longer any dispute over that original subject matter, the parties have turned their energies to disputing about the dispute itself. This time, the proceedings which culminated in the present appeal were commenced by the appellant, the owner of that strip of land, who has claimed against the respondent, who had been found not to have that right of way despite years of asserting that it did, in four causes of action,
These proceedings are, in fact, replete with irony as well as legal significance. It is ironic that a dispute bitterly fought over several decades by two parties who have nothing but personal ill will towards each other has engendered (for Singapore law) questions of the first importance in relation to the development of the common law in general and tort law in particular. More specifically, of threshold importance to the appellant’s claims for abuse of process and malicious prosecution is the issue of whether these torts ought to be
As we shall see, there are possible parallels in the case before us. One of the principal (and relatively recent) decisions that has endorsed the
By way of a side-note of sorts, the UK Supreme Court in fact delivered (in relation to
… [I]t seems to me to be not only convenient but also sensible that the [Judicial Committee of the Privy Council], which normally consists of the same judges as the [UK] Supreme Court, should, when applying English law, be capable of departing from an earlier decision of the [UK] Supreme Court or House of Lords to the same extent and with the same effect as the [UK] Supreme Court.
It is trite, though, that the Singapore courts are not bound to follow decisions of either the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council emanating from another jurisdiction or the UK Supreme Court. We are hence
What will be of crucial importance in our analysis below is whether the various precedents which applied the tort of malicious prosecution in the
We pause to observe that the first sub-issue (see [4] above) outlined in the preceding paragraphs is also relevant to whether the tort of
The
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