NK Mulsan Co Ltd v INTL Asia Pte Ltd
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Judge | Woo Bih Li J |
Judgment Date | 08 November 2018 |
Neutral Citation | [2018] SGHC 242 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Suresh Divyanathan and Leong Yu Chong Aaron (Oon & Bazul LLP) |
Docket Number | Suit No 139 of 2018 (Summons No 4417 of 2018) |
Date | 08 November 2018 |
Hearing Date | 15 October 2018 |
Subject Matter | Stay of Execution,Civil Procedure |
Year | 2018 |
Defendant Counsel | Tan Thye Hoe Timothy and Shakti Sadashiv (AsiaLegal LLC) |
Court | High Court (Singapore) |
Citation | [2018] SGHC 242 |
Published date | 13 November 2018 |
The main action is by the plaintiff, NK Mulsan Co Ltd (“NKM”), against the defendant, INTL Asia Pte Ltd (“INTL”), for the return of US$3 million (“the Deposit”) under a Deposit Agreement dated 19 August 2016 (“the Deposit Agreement”) between the parties. NKM is a company registered in the Republic of Korea and its shares are publicly traded on the Korea Stock Exchange. INTL is a private company incorporated in the Republic of Singapore.
INTL resisted the claim on the basis that the Deposit was to be returned to NKM only if NKM performed all its obligations to INTL in respect of certain contracts. It alleged that NKM had not performed all its obligations and sought to retain the Deposit based on an intended counterclaim against NKM which was for an estimated sum of US$1,353,140 (“the Disputed Sum”).
On 4 September 2018, I granted summary judgment in favour of NKM against INTL for US$1,646,860 (“the Judgment Sum”) and made various orders. The Judgment Sum was the difference between the Deposit and the Disputed Sum. I am delivering my grounds of decision in respect of that decision (“the Substantive Decision”) separately.
The present grounds of decision pertain to INTL’s application in Summons No 4417 of 2018 for a stay of execution pending INTL’s appeal to the Court of Appeal against my decision granting the summary judgment. I dismissed the stay application on 15 October 2018 and set out my reasons below.
The arguments and the court’s reasons The reasons for INTL’s application for a stay of execution were:
The parties agreed that the principles applicable to an application for a stay of execution were stated in
The parties also raised the case of
Two other points were also mentioned in
First, the merits of the appeal are not material. This is because the special circumstances which entitle the court to order a stay of execution are circumstances which go to the enforcement of the judgment and not those which go to its correctness (see
In
I was of the view that the alleged merits of an appeal do not usually constitute a relevant factor for the purpose of a stay application unless it can be easily gleaned, without a minute examination of the merits, that the appeal will be likely to fail or succeed. In other words, if it appears obvious that the appeal is likely to fail or succeed, that will be a relevant factor.
The second other point from the two cases is that the fact that a successful litigant is outside Singapore, and it would be inconvenient or expensive to seek recovery outside Singapore is not, of itself, a special circumstance warranting a stay (see
In
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Civil Procedure
...[2018] SGHCR 8. 145 30 June 2005; entry into force 1 October 2015. 146 Choice of Court Agreements Act (Cap 39A, 2017 Rev Ed) s 2(1). 147 [2019] 3 SLR 453. 148 [2010] SGHC 174 at [7]. 149 NK Mulsan Co Ltd v INTL Asia Pte Ltd [2019] 3 SLR 453 at [6]. 150 [2018] 5 SLR 349. See also BQP v BQQ [......