Tuan Kong Beo (Teochew) Temple v Tian Kong Buddhist Temple

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Patrick Tay Wei Sheng
• Judgment Date: 06 April 2018
• Neutral Citation: [2018] SGDC 99
• Court: District Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Suit No 308 of 2018; Summons No 524 of 2018
• Year: 2018
• Published date: 31 October 2018
• Hearing Date: 08 March 2018,29 March 2018
• Plaintiff Counsel: Haridas Vasantha Devi and Jacelyn Chua (Belinda Ang Tang & Partners)
• Defendant Counsel: Lim Chee San (TanLim Partnership)
• Citation: [2018] SGDC 99

Deputy Registrar Patrick Tay Wei Sheng:

This is a summons by the Defendant in Suit No 308 of 2018 for a declaration that the District Court has no jurisdiction to hear the Suit.

Background

The Plaintiff and the Defendant are registered societies. They operated Chinese temples on the island of Pulau Tekong off mainland Singapore. During the mid-1980s, the government of Singapore resettled the residents of Pulau Tekong onto mainland Singapore. The Parties eventually set tup an association, the Pulau Tekong Joint Temple (the “Joint Association”) to manage the resettlement compensation paid to them, with a view to ensuring that their congregations could continue worshipping their deities after the resettlement.

On 1 May 1985, the government granted the Parties a 30-year lease of a parcel of land on mainland Singapore (the “Premises”) for them to conduct their religious activities. When this lease expired in 2015, the government granted the Joint Association a further 30-year lease of the Premises (the “Lease”) for an initial $650,000 and an annual rent of $12 (waived with effect from 1992).¹

Separately, the Parties signed a written agreement dated 4 July 2011 (the “2011 Agreement”) to regulate their use of the Premises.²

Today, the Premises comprise a “temple land and building”.³

Parties’ cases

The Plaintiff prays for an order to compel the Defendant to comply with the 2011 Agreement by not obstructing its use of the Premises for, inter alia, its annual celebrations of the birth of its deity, “Tuan Pek Gong”. It alleges that the Chairman of the Defendant, Mr Chin Tiam Soy (“Chin”), had parked his vehicle to obstruct the preparations for such celebrations in 2016, 2017, and 2018.⁴

The Defendant submits that this action by the Plaintiff is in respect of a subject-matter the value of which exceeds $250,000 monetary jurisdiction of the District Court because the consideration for the Premises was $650,000.⁵ It adds that it had “wholly funded the purchase of the Current Lease”, and suggests that the remedies sought by the Plaintiff in the Suit amount to an application for a “gift” of the Premises.⁶

The Plaintiff replies that it is seeking not possession of the Premises but only enforcement of the 2011 Agreement.⁷ The subject-matter in relation to which it seeks relief is therefore not the Premises per se but the “contractual obligations of the Defendant not to obstruct [its] use of parts of the Premises for its stated activities”.⁸ It adds that the value of these activities are well within the jurisdiction of the District Court because its total expenses for 2014, 2015, and 2016 were only $20,920, $23,650, and $42,923 respectively.⁹

Decision

The general civil jurisdiction of the District Court is prescribed in s 19 of the State Courts Act (Cap 321, 2007 Rev Ed) (“State Courts Act”):

General civil jurisdiction

19.— …

(2) Subject to subsections (3) and (4), a District Court shall have all the jurisdiction of the High Court to hear and try any action in personam where — (a) the defendant is served with a writ of summons or any other originating process — (i) in Singapore in the manner prescribed by Rules of Court; or (ii) outside Singapore in the circumstances authorised by and in the manner prescribed by Rules of Court; or (b) the defendant submits to the jurisdiction of a District Court.

…

(4) Subject to sections 22 and 23, a District Court’s jurisdiction under subsection (2) shall not include jurisdiction to hear and try any action where — (a) the amount claimed in the action exceeds the District Court limit; or (b) any remedy or relief sought in the action is in respect of a subject-matter the value of which exceeds the District Court limit.

[Emphasis added]

Pursuant to s 2 of the SCA, the “District Court limit” is $250,000.

There appears to be no reported case that has expressly considered the words, “remedy or relief sought in the action is in respect of a subject-matter the value of which exceeds the District Court limit”, in s 19(4) of the SCA. That said, a similar phrase, “amount in dispute, or the value of the subject-matter, at the hearing before [the lower court]”, is present in ss 21(1) and 34(2) of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Cap 322, 2007 Rev Ed) (“SCJA”), This phrase was examined in the context of the monetary threshold below which leave is needed to appeal to the High Court and the Court of Appeal in Fong Khim Ling (administrator of the estate of Fong Ching Pau Lloyd, deceased) v Tan Teck Ann [2014] 2 SLR 659 (“Fong Khim Ling”) and Paul Patrick Baragwanath and another v Republic of Singapore Yacht Club [2016] 1 SLR 1295 (“Baragwanath”).

I set out s 21(1) of the SCJA:

Appeals from District and Magistrates’ Courts

21.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this Act or any other written law, an appeal shall lie to the High Court from a decision of a District Court or a Magistrate’s Court — (a) in any case where the amount in dispute, or the value of the subject-matter, at the hearing before that District Court or Magistrate’s Court (excluding interest and costs) exceeds $50,000 or such other amount as may be specified by an order made under subsection (3); or (b) with the leave of that District Court or Magistrate’s Court or the High Court, in any other case.

I recognise that the monetary threshold for a dissatisfied litigant to appeal to the High Court (under s 21(1) of the SCJA) serves a purpose different from that for a litigant to claim at first instance in the District Court (under s 19(4) of the SCA). The former operates as “a screening mechanism to sieve out non-serious and unmeritorious appeals” (Fong Khim Ling at [13]). The latter operates to require that “all proceedings falling prima facie within the purview of the SCA ought to be commenced in the subordinate courts” (Cheong Ghim Fah v Murugian s/o Rangasamy [2004] 3 SLR(R) 193 (“Cheong Ghim Fah”) at [12]). Still, ascertaining whether a monetary threshold has been met is primarily an objective matter. I thus see no reason why the observations in Fong Khim Ling and Baragwanath on s 21(1) of the SCJA cannot guide my application of s 19(4) of the SCA. Indeed, given that s 21(1) of the SCJA operates restrictively while s 19(4) of the SCA operates permissively, a more liberal construction could be applied to the monetary threshold in s 19(4) of the SCA.

In Fong Khim Ling at [27], the Court of Appeal observed that the words, “value of the subject-matter”, should be read synonymously with the words, “amount in dispute”, in the context of the monetary threshold for bringing an appeal to the Court of Appeal under s 34(2) of the SCJA. The two phrases are in substance simply “alternative formulations to describe the same thing – the quantification of the claim before the [lower] Court” [emphasis added]. Although these observations were made by the Court of Appeal in in the context of s 34(2) of the SCJA, “the same approach must, for the sake...