Pang Teck Kong v Chew Eng Hwa

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Warren Khoo L H J
• Judgment Date: 21 February 1992
• Neutral Citation: [1992] SGHC 31
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Year: 1992
• Plaintiff Counsel: Simon Yuen (Phua)
• Defendant Counsel: K K Tang
• Citation: [1992] SGHC 31

Judgment:

Delivered by Warren L H Khoo, J...

This is a claim for damages for injury sustained in a motor accident. Liability was agreed before the hearing on the basis that the plaintiff was to be awarded 65% of the total damages assessed. The hearing before me was thus confined to matters bearing on the damages to be awarded.

In this unfortunate accident, the plaintiff, who was riding a motor-cycle along Hillview Avenue on 17 August 1985, was run over by a lorry driven by the defendant. His right leg was crushed under a wheel of the lorry. It has not been denied that his leg was run over not once, but twice, the second time when the defendant, for reasons not apparent, reversed the lorry over him when he was on the ground. In the surgeon's words, the plaintiff sustained a severe comminuted fracture of the right tibia and fibula with non-viability of the leg and foot distal to the injury. He was in a state of shock as a result of severe blood loss.

As soon as he had been resuscitated and his condition was stabilised, he was sent to the emergency theatre. There, his right leg was amputated below the knee.

He stayed in hospital for 32 days. But the stump of his amputated leg took until December to heal enough for him to be fitted with an artificial leg. He had a great deal of trouble with the artificial leg he got from the hospital. In September, 1986, he went to a private firm, Limbs & Appliances Pte Ltd ("Limbs"), to get a leg fitted, and he has since been using the artificial limbs and parts supplied by them. He also found a job with them, of which more later.

The plaintiff was a healthy robust young man of 22 before the accident. He was a regular serviceman in the army, having signed up for a six-year contract which still had some one and a half years to run. He was on the combat side. He had been specially selected and trained as a sniper. At the date of the accident, he was an Infantry Section Leader, training and coaching trainee snipers. He held the substantive rank of corporal although he was in fact carrying the responsibilities of the higher rank of local sergeant. He intended to make the army his career, but when his six-year term came to an end at the end of December 1986, the army would not renew his contract because of the loss of his leg. Fortunately, Limbs offered him a job and he started with them two months after his army contract expired. He worked initially as an apprentice prosthetist, and then as a prosthetist, although, this being an unregulated vocation, the latter job title would be no more than a mark of recognition of increased competence.

The plaintiff, to his credit, has adjusted well to a life with disability. He has passed his secondary III examinations and intends to go further if everything goes well. He is good with his hands, as he was before the accident. At Limbs, he makes artificial limbs and other prosthetic appliances. His employers put him in charge of their branch at the National University Hospital. Mr Hia, the managing director of Limbs, said that there was nothing to stop the plaintiff from starting his own business. The plaintiff himself says that his disability would not affect him in a sedentary job. He drives his own Subaru 1000 cc car. He was even sent to the employers' principals in Germany for a four-week seminar.

However, it cannot be pretended that everything is as well as it might have been. Mr. Hia said that he once considered the idea of offering the plaintiff a share of his business, but this has been shelved as there have been second thoughts about his ability to cope with the Malaysian side of the operations of the company, which involves a considerable amount of travel, although he has no difficulty coping with the Singapore side of the operations.

The plaintiff is not highly educated. The only experience and skill that he has are those which he has acquired in the armed forces and at Limbs. I think it is fair to say that, with his physical disability, his qualifications as a sniper are in practical terms of little use to him. It cannot be doubted that his limited breadth of experience is an inhibiting factor as far as his vocational mobility is concerned.

Certain items of special damages were agreed or were not disputed. The other items of damages, special and general, which need to be assessed are as follows:-

(1) Pain, suffering, loss of amenities

In respect of this head of damages, I take into consideration the excruciating pain the plaintiff must have suffered at the time of the accident in the way described earlier. I consider the long and painful road to recovery from the traumatic amputation of his leg and the suffering he undoubtedly went through adjusting to a life with disability. I also consider the fact that from being a physically active person, the plaintiff has had to put up with a life in which his physical mobility is severely curtailed. Lastly, I consider the fact that this loss of amenities occurred at a young age, and he has to put up with it for many years to come. For all these reasons, I do not think that the figure suggested by his counsel of $50,000 is at all excessive. I would award this amount.

(2) Pre-trial loss of earnings

The pre-trial loss of earnings is represented by the difference between what the plaintiff would have earned had the accident not happened and what he has actually earned.

The plaintiff's work and conduct as a corporal were good. He was described as an enthusiastic soldier. A personnel officer from the Ministry of Defence testified, as one might expect, that if the plaintiff had continued in service, in the normal course, he could have expected to be promoted. The plaintiff himself said, and I accept, that if he had not met with this accident, he could have expected to be promoted to the rank of sergeant by the end of 1986, two years after completion of his sniper training course.

A corporal's and sergeant's pay consists of roughly four elements. The largest element is the rank pay. There is then a vocational component, followed by National Wages Council ("NWC") yearly increments and "others". In 1990 there was a salary revision. The maximum pay for a sergeant to-day is about $2,000 a month, of which rank pay accounts for $1,200. As the starting rank pay for a sergeant is $805 and the yearly increment is $45, it would take a sergeant 8 or 9 years to reach the maximum pay.

I accept plaintiff's counsel's estimate of $101,777.37 as the amount that the plaintiff would have earned from January 1987 to September 1991 had he remained in the army. Counsel's estimate is based on the plaintiff drawing salaries as a corporal for three years from 1987 to 1989, and as a sergeant in 1990 and 1991, the amount progressing from $1157 in 1987 to $1582 in 1991. Projecting counsel's estimate to the end of December 1991 for ease of calculation and to bring it close to the date of this judgment, the global figure should be $108,000.00. This estimate, on the basis that the plaintiff would have continued to be paid as a corporal for three years into his second contract, would appear to be conservative, having regard to the evidence, which I accept, of a good prospect of the plaintiff being promoted to sergeant by the time he renewed his contract at the end of 1986.

Defendant's counsel criticised the estimate, taking the point that after 1984 no more NWC yearly increments had been included in the monthly pay. I am not sure whether he was right. However, even on the basis he suggested, of excluding a NWC component, but computing the loss on the assumption of the plaintiff being paid as a sergeant rather than as a corporal from January 1987, the figure of $108,000 would still err in favour of the defendant though to a much smaller extent.

Defendant's counsel also submitted that the estimate should not include the gratuity the plaintiff would have been entitled under the terms of his contract to receive upon completion of his contract. I do not accept this submission. It seems to me that the...