Seow Fook Sen Aloysius v Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP
Jurisdiction | Singapore |
Judge | Andrew Phang Boon Leong JCA |
Judgment Date | 12 May 2022 |
Neutral Citation | [2022] SGCA 40 |
Court | Court of Appeal (Singapore) |
Docket Number | Originating Summons No 5 of 2022 |
Published date | 18 May 2022 |
Year | 2022 |
Hearing Date | 01 March 2022 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Christopher Anand s/o Daniel, Harjean Kaur, Yeo Yi Ling Eileen, Keith Valentine Lee Jia Jin and Shalini Rajasegar (Advocatus Law LLP) |
Defendant Counsel | Liew Wey-Ren Colin (Colin Liew LLC) |
Citation | [2022] SGCA 40 |
The coming into force of the Supreme Court of Judicature (Amendment) Act 2019 (Act 40 of 2019) (“the SCJA(A)”) established the Appellate Division of the High Court and a statutory scheme in the Supreme Court of Judicature Act 1969 (2020 Rev Ed) (“the SCJA”) governing the allocation of appeals between the Court of Appeal and the Appellate Division. Under the statutory scheme, appeals from decisions of the General Division of the High Court are to be made to the Appellate Division, unless they come within the Sixth Schedule to the SCJA (see ss 29C(1)‒(2) of the SCJA). The present application, Originating Summons No 5 of 2022 (“OS 5”), presents us with an opportunity to provide guidance on how counsel should navigate this statutory scheme and how the categories in the Sixth Schedule ought to be interpreted.
Background OS 5 is an application by Mr Seow Fook Sen Aloysius (“Mr Seow”) for leave to appeal against the decision of a judge in the General Division (“the Judge”) in
The background to OS 1185 was as follows. Sometime in April 2020, Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP (“R&T”) was engaged by Hin Leong Trading Pte Ltd (“HLT”) to carry out some corporate restructuring work. R&T required HLT to provide funds of S$2m as a deposit for the engagement. HLT duly provided a cheque for the deposit. At the request of his wife (a director of HLT), Mr Seow also provided a cheque to R&T. The parties had intended for Mr Seow’s cheque to be deposited in place of HLT’s own cheque if the latter could not be cleared. In the event, HLT’s own cheque did not clear and Mr Seow’s cheque was deposited into HLT’s client account with R&T. R&T then proceeded to carry out the restructuring work.
In November 2020, R&T issued an invoice to HLT (which by then had come under the care of judicial managers) for the sum of S$908,955.68 in respect of HLT’s restructuring work done between 8 April 2020 and 27 April 2020. R&T then informed HLT’s judicial managers that it proposed to set off those fees against the sum of S$2m in HLT’s client account (representing the funds from Mr Seow’s cheque) and return the balance to Mr Seow. It does not appear that HLT’s judicial managers objected to the same. R&T then proceeded to debit S$908,955.68 from HLT’s client account and returned the balance to Mr Seow. Mr Seow was however dissatisfied with the quantum of the fees that had been debited and so he sought an order under s 120 of the LPA for R&T’s bill of costs to HLT to be taxed. HLT has since been wound up.
A preliminary issue stands in the way of this court considering the leave application proper. Sections 29C(1) and (2) of the SCJA provide that an appeal against a decision of the General Division in the exercise of its original or appellate civil jurisdiction is to be made to the Appellate Division and
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It appears that Mr Seow has taken this position for two reasons. First, it is because R&T’s engagement (which gave rise to the disputed bill for which Mr Seow seeks an order for taxation) had arisen in the
To determine if Mr Seow’s position is justified, we need to consider the proper scope of the Sixth Schedule to the SCJA. The appeals which the Sixth Schedule provides are to be made to the Court of Appeal by default can be classified into three categories:
The establishment of the Appellate Division and the statutory scheme for the allocation of appeals in the SCJA was meant to relieve the Court of Appeal’s growing caseload from a quantitative perspective, while simultaneously permitting it to focus its resources on matters which would benefit from its expertise as the apex court of the land from a qualitative perspective (see the decision of this court in
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Tan Beng Hui Carolyn v Law Society of Singapore
...to begin with. In its further submissions, the Respondent referred us to the case of Seow Fook Sen Aloysius v Rajah & Tann Singapore LLP [2022] SGCA 40 (“Seow Aloysius”). At [13], the court held that a case that engages paragraphs 1(a) to 1(e) of the Sixth Schedule is one where, at the leas......