Ong Jane Rebecca v Pricewaterhouse Coopers

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judgment Date: 03 June 2011
• Date: 03 June 2011
• Docket Number: Suit No 156 of 2006 (Registrar's
• Court: High Court (Singapore)

Ong Jane Rebecca

Plaintiff

and

Pricewaterhouse Coopers and others

Defendant

[2011] SGHC 146

Choo Han Teck J

Suit No 156 of 2006 (Registrar's Appeal No 158 of 2011)

High Court

Civil Procedure—Summons in chambers—Whether assistant registrar had discretion to reject irregular application which had been accepted by electronic filing system

The third defendant's striking out application was filed out of time, but was accepted by the electronic filing system. The assistant registrar subsequently rejected the application. It was submitted by counsel that once an application had been filed, the assistant registrar was bound to hear it.

Held, dismissing the appeal:

The fact that a form was not rejected by the electronic filing system did not mean that the assistant registrar could not subsequently reject it before the hearing. There may be defects or irregularities which were undetectable by the electronic systems, eg, an application filed out of time. Until these defects or irregularities were corrected, the assistant registrar was entitled not to let the application proceed: at [5].

Plaintiff in person

Sylvia Tee (Allen & Gledhill LLP) for the first and second defendants

Chandra Mohan s/o Rethnam and Gillian Hauw Hui Ying (Rajah & Tann LLP) for the third defendant.

Choo Han Teck J

1 Jane Rebecca Ong (‘the plaintiff’) is the modern day Odysseus. She first arrived in the courts here in 1991 when she sued her former husband and his mother for various claims including the fraudulent transfer and concealment of assets to which she had a share. The present proceedings, taking place about 20 years later, seem remote to the Originating Summons she filed in 1991 but is connected to and arose from that action.

2 The plaintiff had made many journeys to the courts, and in the present proceedings she is again the plaintiff. The first defendant was the firm of accountants that was engaged to act as her experts in proceedings arising from the Originating Summons No 939 of 1991 action. The first defendant had since transformed itself into a new entity known as a limited liability partnership and thus named as the second defendant. The third defendant was the firm of solicitors that acted for her in previous proceedings in 2004 and 2005. Like Odysseus, the plaintiff faced many obstacles in her journeys. The latest came in the form of an application by the third defendant to strike out parts of her (the plaintiff) claim against it (the third...