Ngui Kee Siong v Guan Soo Swee and Another

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: A V Winslow J
• Judgment Date: 17 July 1970
• Neutral Citation: [1970] SGHC 9
• Citation: [1970] SGHC 9
• Date: 17 July 1970
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Subject Matter: Measure of damages,Collision between vehicles at junction controlled by malfunctioning traffic lights,Duty of care,Multiple scars,Shortening of leg caused by discharging sinus,Amount to be awarded as damages for loss of promotion prospects,Damages,Personal injuries cases,Tort,Apportionment of liability between drivers,Fractured femur, tibia and fibula,Duty of drivers approaching junction controlled by malfunctioning traffic lights,Negligence,Amount to be awarded as general damages for pain and suffering and loss of amenities
• Docket Number: Suit No 388 of 1968
• Defendant Counsel: HE Cashin (Murphy & Dunbar),KE Hilborne (Hilborne & Co),Yap Tyo Min (Battenberg & Talma)
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Year: 1970

The plaintiff in this action alleges negligence on the part of the first and second defendants as did the plaintiff in Suit No 1219 of 1967 (Ramoo v Ong Ah Ho & Anor [1968] 2 MLJ 66 ) against the same defendants in relation to the same accident whilst the plaintiff in this suit was a passenger in the back seat on the nearside of the same taxi which was being driven by the present first defendant along Dunearn Road in a southerly direction towards the city. The plaintiff in the other suit sat in the front seat next to the taxi driver. The second defendant was driving a lorry filled with sand along Whitley Road towards its junction with Dunearn Road where it collided with the nearside of the taxi and both plaintiffs, were injured.

The first defendant herein was the second defendant in the previous suit and the second defendant herein was the first defendant in the previous suit.

In the previous suit, Buttrose J in the High Court found that the accident occurred at about 7.30am on 10 July 1966, which was a Sunday morning. In the present suit, on the evidence which I have heard, it seems clearer to me that the accident must have occurred at or around 8.00am and not as early as 7.30am. The police who arrived at about 8.15am at the scene on information received about the accident received their first information whilst they were on patrol duty at Boon Teck Road about a couple of miles away at or around 8.05am. The second and the first defendants respectively gave the time of the accident in their police reports as 7.30am and 8.20am. This cannot be correct. The plaintiff said it was about 8.00am. I find from the evidence that the accident must have occurred at about that time and most definitely before 8.20am because the police witnesses who arrived on information received found that the accident had already occurred when they arrived at 8.15 am.

When a police witness, PW 5, arrived at the scene at about 7.00am he found the traffic lights somewhat defective but the accident had not yet occurred. This particular witness, police constable Say Lip Buck arrived at the scene at 7.00am and took control of traffic along Bukit Timah Road at its junction with Stevens Road. He did not observe the state of traffic at the neighbouring junction of Whitley Road with Dunearn Road but the traffic at his junction, ieStevens Road and Bukit Timah Road junction, was piling up and he controlled traffic by hand signals.

According to him the lights were in a state of disorder at that time and were going faster than normal. He saw green/amber/green in Stevens Road and he saw lights going in their proper sequence along Bukit Timah Road to the north, but faster than normal. When originally challenged in court as to the respective speeds of the two sets of lights along Stevens Road and Bukit Timah Road he was only able to say that they were faster than normal but when he was taxed by counsel for the plaintiff as to a statement he had made to Mr Murphy, the senior partner in the same firm as counsel for the plaintiff, he admitted that he was not sure about the evidence he had given before me but agreed that what he had told Mr Murphy in December 1968 was correct and that the lights were going as fast as at one second intervals.

It is important to consider this witness`s evidence very carefully because he was also a witness in the previous proceedings. In the previous suit of course he did not given any evidence of this kind because Mr Murphy saw him only in December 1968, long after that suit had been concluded and decided. The present case with a new plaintiff in respect of the same accident came before me on 20 June 1969 and was part-heard from time to time until 9 March this year. I was apprised of what had occurred in the suit before Buttrose J where he found that the first defendant, the taxi driver, was only a quarter to blame and that the lorry driver who was driving along Whitley Road was three-quarters to blame for the same accident. Buttrose J held that it was palpably obvious to anyone approaching the entire junction, be he pedestrian or motorist, that the lights were defective and that both the defendants should have been on their guard because a situation had arisen which called for the exercise of the utmost care and caution at what was to all intents and purposes an uncontrolled intersection. Buttrose J held that in those circumstances the lorry driver owed a greater duty to traffic approaching from his right along a one way main road than the taxi owed to him.

In the event of appeal, reference will no doubt be made to both the proceedings before Buttrose J and before the Federal Court and perhaps before the Privy Council whatever my decision may be and I do not therefore propose to go into any great detail about those aspects of the evidence which were more or less the same both before Buttrose J and before me.

The plaintiff in this action through his counsel adduced what he considered to be better evidence about the defective state of the lights at this junction than had been adduced before Buttrose J and having considered the evidence before Buttrose J on which the Federal Court ( Gan Soon Swee & Anor v Ramoo [1969] 1 MLJ 59 ) decided that both the defendants were not to blame, I have come to the conclusion on the evidence before me, insofar as it differs from the evidence before Buttrose J, that a different conclusion can be reached from that reached by the Federal Court. I should not be taken to be holding that the evidence before me was perfect but it satisfied me on the case as a whole that the lights were in fact so defective as to have been a warning to the defendants to proceed with the utmost care and caution.

Counsel prevailed upon me to visit the scene which is as familiar to me as it was to Buttrose J but on the occasion that I visited it during the trial I was taken to different positions along Whitley Road and along Dunearn Road to enable me to see from how far away one could see the lights clearly. Buttrose J, I understand, did not consider it necessary to visit the scene because he was familiar with it. Although I myself am familiar with the scene I nevertheless acceded to the request of counsel. Evidence was also called before me as it was not before Buttrose J of a surveyor who submitted a plan (exh P9) from which it is clear that from more than two hundred yards away in either direction the lights in question are visible to a person with good eyesight though they would not necessarily be shining like beacons.

Moreover, a person driving a vehicle along either road would be able to observe the nature of the traffic along the other road fairly easily; at least, in the case of a vehicle travelling along Dunearn Road one could observe a vehicle in Whitley Road coming from one`s left at a distance of 400 feet, almost immediately after passing the electric sub-station along Dunearn Road. Similarly, a person driving a vehicle along Whitley Road should be able to see traffic to his right along Dunearn Road travelling south along that one way street the moment that vehicle in Dunearn Road goes past the electric sub-station.

It should be remembered that before Buttrose J the pleadings did not allege that the lights were known to be defective by either driver. Before me, however, the pleadings were different and particulars of negligence relating to the failure of either driver to notice that lights were out of order and to exercise extra care were in fact added.

Another difference between the evidence given before me and that before Buttrose J was to the following effect. Whereas corporal Abdullah bin Rahman, PW4, who arrived at the scene at 8.45am said that it was possible that lights in both directions were green at certain stages at the same time the evidence before me of experts from the General Electric Company responsible for the maintenance of most of the traffic lights in Singapore (including those at this junction) was that it was virtually impossible for the lights in both directions to be green at the same time. This evidence I accept. There was clear evidence to the effect that the only reason why lights could show green in both directions would be when there was cable shortening. Insulation tests on all underground cables made it quite clear that they were in perfect condition and that there never could have been any cable shortening. Both the experts from the General Electric Company agreed on this.

This has been a somewhat perplexing case in the sense that I have to deliver a judgment without having the benefit of the decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on an appeal against the decision of the Federal Court in the previous suit as regards the respective degrees of negligence, if any, shown by either driver. In the meantime I am bound by the decision of the Federal Court to a certain extent on the kind of evidence which was before them as recorded by Buttrose J. As I do not know how long it will take before the decision of the Privy Council arrives and as I have already reserved judgment for nearly four months since March this year I have felt it incumbent on me to deliver a judgment as early as possible on the facts as they were presented before me. No doubt different results may appear but that cannot be helped much as I would like to avoid such a situation.

One outstanding feature of this case compared with the evidence before Buttrose J is the fact that the taxi driver himself gave evidence before me. Before Buttrose J on advice, he chose not to give any evidence at all. Another feature is that the plaintiff in the suit before Buttrose J gave evidence of having seen that the lights were green along Dunearn Road. In the case before me, the present plaintiff, the fisheries officer from Sarawak, did not notice what the lights were like at all. As he was seated on the nearside of the back seat it is not surprising that he did not notice the lights as in the case of the...