Teo Song Kheng v Teo Poh Hoon

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Kannan Ramesh J
• Judgment Date: 16 March 2020
• Neutral Citation: [2020] SGHC 47
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Suit No 80 of 2019
• Year: 2020
• Published date: 19 March 2020
• Hearing Date: 09 October 2019,10 October 2019,06 March 2020,03 March 2020,19 November 2019,08 October 2019
• Plaintiff Counsel: Tan Kheng Ann Alvin (Wong Thomas & Leong)
• Defendant Counsel: Hua Yew Fai Terence, Chia Wei Lin Rebecca and Mohamed Baiross (I.R.B. Law LLP)
• Subject Matter: Gifts,Inter vivos
• Citation: [2020] SGHC 47

Kannan Ramesh J:

This suit arose from a dispute concerning the ownership and possession of a specified list of items (“the disputed items”) comprising mostly jewellery. The list may be found at Annex A of the Statement of Claim. The plaintiff is the defendant’s younger brother and they are the co-executors of the estate of their late mother, Mdm Seah Gek Eng (“Mdm Seah”). The plaintiff claimed that the disputed items had been given to him by Mdm Seah and the defendant subsequently took possession of them without his consent. In short, the allegation is that the defendant had converted the disputed items. The plaintiff therefore brought the primary claim in his personal capacity for an order for an account and delivery up of the disputed items. In the alternative, he sought an account, valuation and delivery up of the disputed items qua beneficiary of Mdm Seah’s estate. The alternative case was only relevant if I did not accept the plaintiff’s evidence that the disputed items had been gifted to him by Mdm Seah, but nevertheless found that they were in the possession of the defendant.

It was common ground that two main issues needed to be determined in this suit: whether the disputed items were gifts to the plaintiff from Mdm Seah (“the gift issue”); and, whether the defendant was in possession of the disputed items (“the possession issue”) into which any narrower lines of inquiry identified by the defendant could be subsumed. Also, as no defence of limitation on the possession issue had been raised, I did not consider it.

Having considered the evidence and the parties’ submissions, I found that the plaintiff had not shown that the defendant was in possession of the disputed items, or that they had been gifted to him by Mdm Seah, and dismissed the plaintiff’s claim accordingly. I should also point out that while the defendant had brought a counterclaim for an order for an account and delivery up of the disputed items as well, she had discontinued it with costs. I delivered oral grounds on 6 March 2020. I now set out the full reasons for my decision.

The facts Agreed background facts

Mdm Seah passed away on 22 June 2009 leaving behind a will dated 31 March 2003 (“the Will”). The Will named the plaintiff and the defendant the executor and executrix respectively. Grant of Probate was obtained on 6 May 2010. The validity of the Will, its contents and the Grant of Probate were not challenged for the purpose of this suit.

Under the Will, Mdm Seah’s children were to receive the following: Mr Richard Teo, the parties’ brother, was to receive $1,000; As for the residual estate: The plaintiff and defendant were to each receive one-third; The remaining one-third was to be given to Mr Eric Teo (“Eric”), the parties’ other brother, in the following manner: $200,000 for him to purchase a flat, and $2,000 per month for as long as he lived. Any residual amount from Eric’s one-third share that was not exhausted by the time of his death would be given to his sons, Justin Teo and Darren Teo (“Darren”), in equal shares absolutely.

The parties were in agreement that prior to Mdm Seah’s death, a safe deposit box (“the First Box”) had been maintained with DBS Bank, Orchard Branch in the plaintiff’s and Mdm Seah’s joint names. The disputed items as well as other items of value belonging to Mdm Seah (“the other items”) had been kept in the First Box until shortly after Mdm Seah’s passing. The other items comprised, inter alia, individual gifts from the plaintiff, the defendant and Eric to Mdm Seah, and certain gold items that she had purchased herself. It appeared that the other items had been distributed amongst the plaintiff, the defendant and Eric sometime on or about 14 or 15 July 2009 at a meeting at the Mandarin Hotel.

On or about 23 June 2009, shortly after Mdm Seah passed away, the plaintiff and Eric emptied the First Box of its contents and brought them to DBS Bank, Siglap Branch (“the Siglap Branch”). There, a new safe deposit box was opened in the plaintiff’s sole name (“the Second Box”). The plaintiff deposited the contents of the First Box in the Second Box. The disputed items remained stored in the Second Box until on or about 15 July 2009. Notably, on 15 July 2009, the defendant gained access to the Second Box as her name was added as an account holder.

On 15 July 2009, the plaintiff removed the disputed items from the Second Box and brought them to the office of one Lim Ngang Him (“Lim”), the Managing Director of Efficient Jewellery Industries Pte Ltd, to be inventoried. Lim was a jeweller who had been frequently patronised by Mdm Seah. There was some controversy as to whether Eric and the defendant were with the plaintiff at that time as well as other facts surrounding the visit. I address this below.

Contested facts leading to the present dispute

The parties’ stories diverged with respect to the precise circumstances surrounding the visit to Lim. The parties disagreed on the events that occurred before and after the visit to Lim, in particular whether the defendant was handed the disputed items by the plaintiff on 16 July 2009 to be returned to the Second Box, and what had happened to the disputed items thereafter.

The plaintiff asserted the following version of events: On 14 July 2009, prior to Lim’s inventory of the disputed items, the plaintiff, defendant and Eric had retrieved the contents of the Second Box and proceeded to the Mandarin Hotel. There, the other items were divided amongst themselves. The items that had been gifted to Mdm Seah by the plaintiff, defendant and Eric were returned to the respective donors whilst the gold items were distributed amongst them in an agreed proportion. The disputed items were, however, not distributed and were returned to the Second Box by the plaintiff. On 15 July 2009, the plaintiff, Eric and the defendant visited the Siglap Branch again, this time to collect the disputed items. They then met Lim at his office with the disputed items. Lim was asked to prepare an inventory of the disputed items which he did by cataloguing each item in a list and cross-referencing each item to a colour photocopy of the same that he had taken. The plaintiff seemed to suggest that Lim had provided an “estimate number” together with the inventory, which I understood to be a rough estimate of the value of the items. However, according to Lim, the plaintiff only asked him to value the items “some years later”. The disputed items were collected from Lim by the plaintiff, the defendant and Eric on 16 July 2009. As the plaintiff had to catch a flight to Bangkok that day, he entrusted the disputed items to the defendant to be deposited in the Second Box. However, the defendant never returned the disputed items to the Second Box as requested, instead keeping them for herself. The defendant never informed the plaintiff of this.

The defendant did not dispute the events of 14 July 2009 in so far as they relate to the distribution of the other items at the meeting at the Mandarin Hotel. The defendant also accepted that she was added as an account holder to the Second Box on 15 July 2009. However, the defendant’s version of events differed as follows: The meeting at the Mandarin Hotel, according to the defendant, occurred on either 14 or 15 July 2009. Prior to this meeting, the plaintiff had met Lim alone at the latter’s office and asked him to prepare the inventory of the disputed items – neither the defendant nor Eric were present at this meeting. The defendant and Eric arrived at Lim’s office only after the preparation of the inventory. When they arrived, the plaintiff showed them his handwritten note containing Lim’s estimated values of the disputed items. Following the distribution of the other items at the Mandarin Hotel, on 15 July 2009, the plaintiff returned the disputed items to the Second Box. On the very next day, 16 July 2009, the plaintiff unilaterally and without anyone’s knowledge removed the disputed items from the Second Box and had kept them since.

Notably, the disputed items were not produced in this suit, and their location remains unknown. This was unsurprising given that both parties disavowed possession of the disputed items and knowledge of their whereabouts, pointing the finger instead at the other.

Finally, it should be noted that the parties, along with Eric and his two sons, entered into a Deed of Family Arrangement on 17 August 2017 (“the Deed”). The Deed was entered into in part because of the dispute amongst the family members over their respective entitlements to the disputed items. While the parties did not challenge the Deed, they took different positions on how it ought to be construed, and how it affected their respective positions in this suit. I will elaborate on the Deed later in these grounds.

The Parties’ cases The plaintiff’s case

The plaintiff’s case was that the disputed items were inter vivos gifts from Mdm Seah to him, and that the defendant had possession of them at the time of these proceedings. Accordingly, the plaintiff sought an order that the defendant account for and deliver up the disputed items to him. In support of this, the plaintiff made the following submissions: The fact that Mdm Seah had gifted the disputed items to the plaintiff might be inferred from the defendant’s conduct since 2016. The email correspondence and the Deed evinced the defendant’s acknowledgment of the plaintiff’s right to the disputed items. The Deed, it was asserted, was evidence of the gift. The disputed items were handed over to the defendant by the plaintiff on 16 July 2009 in the presence of Eric, to be deposited in the Second Box, but the defendant failed to do so. They had remained in her possession since. Eric’s and Lim’s evidence supported the plaintiff’s testimony in this regard. The defendant’s evidence was riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions, and thus should not be...