Wee Soon Hian v Lai Ching Mow

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: A V Winslow J
• Judgment Date: 19 June 1968
• Neutral Citation: [1968] SGHC 17
• Docket Number: Suit No 2163 of 1967
• Date: 19 June 1968
• Year: 1968
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Plaintiff Counsel: HE Cashin and Richard Ho (Murphy & Dunbar)
• Citation: [1968] SGHC 17
• Defendant Counsel: M Coomaraswamy (Rodyk & Davidson)
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Duty of care,Tort,Whether negligence established,Negligence,Acting to avoid a head-on collision with vehicle on its wrong side of road

This is one of those infrequent cases where I have no hesitation at all in rejecting the evidence of the plaintiff on all disputed matters. He was clearly proved to be a liar on about the most material issue in the case, to wit, whether there was an oncoming car which encroached on the defendant`s side of the road in such a manner as to render the defendant`s action inevitable in, what is frequently referred to as, the `agony of the moment`. I have found it impossible to place any reliance in him at all. On the contrary, I accept the defendant as, substantially, an honest and reliable witness.

Taking the view which I do about their respective attitudes towards the truth, I do not propose to enter into a detailed analysis of their evidence.

I am satisfied beyond doubt that what the plaintiff himself said about the oncoming car in his original police report, to wit, that it took too much of the road and caused the defendant to swerve left to avoid it, which he denied in evidence, was a true account of what actually took place and that he has subsequently seen fit to falsify and tailor his evidence to suit the remedy he now seeks.

In my judgment, he has hopelessly failed to establish any negligence on the defendant`s part. This should suffice to dismiss his claim but since the defendant`s veracity has been called in question, I feel I ought to state my own views on his version of the accident which I have no hesitation in accepting as a true version of what really occurred.

As counsel who took over the conduct of the plaintiff`s case at the continued cross-examination of the defendant on 30 May, after the case had been part-heard previously on 10 May this year, has himself stated in other motor accident cases in which he has appeared before me, it is difficult for witnesses to be mathematically precise some time after the event about matters such as times, distances and speeds. It is small wonder, therefore, that the defendant who was driving the taxi, in which the plaintiff was a passenger, just after midnight on the morning of 5 January 1967, on a left-hand bend in Upper Thomson Road at about the 5.75 milestone towards the city, was unable to be as mathematically precise about these matters as he was expected and required to be on this particular occasion.

Despite any apparent lack of precision on his part, I am satisfied, on the evidence as a whole, that he was telling the truth to the best of his ability as to why his taxi went off the road on...