Tuesday, November 24, 2009

NUS in 2 new negligence lawsuits

The National University Hospital (NUH) after settling the issue of compensation in one negligence case, has now been hit with 2 new negligence lawsuits.

In the first case, the patient Derrick Peh was completely paralysed after surgery on his shoulder in 2006. He suffered a cardio-pulmonary collapse during the operation. He later died of pneumonia this year, some 3 years after the alleged negligence by NUS. It is likely that since the death took place quite a while after the surgery, issues of causation would be prominent in the case. His family would have to prove that the alleged negligence led to his death. In medical circles, it is well-known that immobility especially in elderly patients, often leads to death from respiratory diseases.

In the second case, the patient, who requested that her name not be mentioned (although her name can be found by any lawyer who is willing to pay for a court search), is suing for alleged mistakes in her cancer treatment. It is claimed that a needle was inserted into her heart and instead of her liver. This later resulted in her undergoing open heart surgery, as a result of which, she is unable to work. This writer expects that her claim would be for any permanent impairment in her lifestyle as well as for loss of income.

In both the above cases, the families are seeking $500,000 as damages.

NUH kidney transplant suit - appeal dropped

After losing a lawsuit in relation to a kidney transplant gone wrong which caused the death of Madam Narindar Kaur , National University Hospital (NUH) has dropped the appeal against the decision. The High Court decision in July this year had found 2 doctors not negligent but found the hospital guilty of negligence. However, the issue of damages was to be assessed later. This can be quite a tedious process as lawyers and the court estimate the life expectancy of the deceased and how much income the deceased person would have earned in the future, and this may also be painful for the family.

NUS had settled the issue of damages on confidential terms with Madam Kaur's family. It is likely that in return for the certainty of compensation and quick payment, they accepted less than what the court might have otherwise ordered. An appeal to the Court of Appeal from the High Court decision and the actual assessment of damages might have added 6 to 12 months to the date when payment of damages (if any) would have been made to the family.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

NUH lawsuit won by patient and family

In July 2009, the High Court released its judgment in the case of the lawsuit concerning the death of kidney donor Narindar Kaur. She had died as a result of internal bleeding following an kidney transplant operation.

The court found that the 2 defendant doctors, Li Man Kay and David Consigliere, were not guilty of negligence as they had followed accepted practice. However, the National University Hospital was found to be negligent. This was because the Hospital had failed to monitor the deceased's medical condition to detect post-surgery complications. Unfortunately, a key witness, a Filipino nurse who could have shed light on what exactly happened during a critical period following the operation, returned to her home and was not available to testify in court.

As the court had decided on liability (that one of the defendants is liable), the next stage is quantum assessment - where the court will assess the damages payable to the family of the deceased.

As a result of the lawsuit, NUS now takes additional precautions - following surgery, all donor-patients are placed in a high dependency ward for 24 hours. There, all their vital signs are monitored continuously, before being sent to the general ward.

Friday, September 18, 2009

The mystery of the missing $850k

Mr Satinder Singh, a businessman, is suing a lawyer who was recently suspended for a year, for the loss of $850,000 which was spent in the course of a property deal. The sum of over $1 million was deposited into an account by Mr Singh as his contribution to a joint plan to develop the property with some other parties. Mr Singh agreed to allow Louis Ang, an undischarged bankrupt to use the funds as he saw fit.

After discovering that only $50,000 was left in the bank account, he lodged a complaint against the lawyer, Mr Uthayasurian, who was alleged to have put himself in a conflict of interests, and failed to advise Mr Singh of the status of Louis Ang and of the dangers of giving Louis Ang the power to use the funds. The Court of Three Judges recently upheld Mr Singh's complaint and suspended Mr Uthayasurian for one year on the grounds that he had placed himself in a conflict of interests position. They stated that this was without prejudice to any finding in any civil lawsuit that Mr Singh might start against Mr Uthayasurian.

Now, Mr Singh's lawsuit has alleged that the lawyer had conspired with Louis Ang to defraud him. The lawyer's defence is first, a denial of the allegation of fraud; second, that Mr Singh was aware of Louis Ang's bankruptcy status and finally, that Mr Singh as an experienced businessman, was aware of the risks of the project.

The property, which is owned by the Brunei government, is a very valuable one in prime area Tanglin Hill.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Insurance premiums for doctors stable

The Medical Protection Society (MPS) is one of the largest medical insurers in Singapore. It is set up as a United Kingdom as a not-for-profit medical defense organisation.

It has stated that medical insurance premiums against lawsuits in relation to the negligence of Singapore doctors will be stable. This shows that claims against Singapore doctors are not likely to rise the forthcoming year. In contrast to the tendency of many United States specialists in the Obstretrics and Gynacology sector to decide to leave the sector because of enormous malpractice insurance premiums, in Singapore, it appears the situation is not as serious - at present, the annual premium is about $25,000, not cheaper but tolerable for a successful surgeon.

It may be that the following factors make lawsuits against doctors less likely in Singapore -

a) in Singapore, the general rule is that the loser of the lawsuit pays the winner's legal fees, which will deter weak or frivilous lawsuits, whereas in the United States; each party pays his own legal fees;

b) US lawyers often work on a contingency fee basis (no win, no fee) which therefore costs nothing for plaintiffs, while this kind of arrangement is not allowed in Singapore; and

c) the acceptance of the court of the Bolam defence referred to in previous postings; and

d) the expense of hiring foreign medical experts to assist in a local plaintiff's claim since the small local profession means that doctors are reluctant to participate in lawsuits against another doctor.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Companies' responsbilities for agents' misdeeds

Earlier, I stated my opinion that real estate companies are probably responsible for the misconduct of their agents. This is based on the fact that the agents are only allowed to transact business under the license of the companies. The agents themselves are not in any separate sole proprietorship, partnership or company.

What about insurance agents and the insurance companies? There are cases that state that insurance companies are not liable for the misconduct of agents representing them. In addition to these cases, there is also the problem that insurance agents are normally working in a separate firm or company. In other words, they are only marketing representatives of the company. However, if the agents have a track record of misconduct and their companies take no disciplinary action against them, interesting issues arise as to whether the companies are in some way negligent.

Sunday, July 5, 2009

Complaint about real estate agent

A reader asked for some advice on a matter of a flat that was unlivable. I am not a practising lawyer and cannot give legal advice but here is some general information.

If the lender of a flat promises to do something before you move in, get it in writing. There is an implied term in rental of accomodation that the accomodation is fit for human habitation. If the smell from the flat is very strong, can you prove that.

If the agent is taking commision from you, then it is arguable that the agent has duties to protect your interests. There is also a chance to take legal action against not only the agent but the agent's company as well since the license is issued to the company and agents must be attached to a company.

If your matter is minor, you want to consider using the Small Claims Tribunal.

For this, please see my blog - http://smallclaimsg.blogspot.com/.

Friday, May 15, 2009

Proving losses - the Ikumene case

In the case of Ikumene Singapore v Leong Chee Leng, the plaintiffs, who were the audited company and its majority shareholder, lost because no duty of care was owed by the auditor to the plaintiff shareholder as regards the statutory audit.

Another reason for the plaintiffs' loss was that they could not prove that their loss was caused by the auditor's negligence. Normally, in the case of negligent misstatement cases eg wrong advice given to a client by a professional, the plaintiff must prove that the wrong information or advice caused his loss. This is shown as follows - if the defendant had provided correct information, the plaintiff would have taken action A, but since wrong information was given, the plaintiff took action B, which turned out to be worse than action A.

In the Ikumene case, the plaintiffs were not able to show how if the auditor was not negligent,and provided them with correct information, they would have avoided losses to the company which were trading losses.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Negligent professionals - sharing the blame

If you are sued for professional negligence, one idea that you should consider is whether or not there are others to blame for any negligence. Sometimes, negligence may be due not to your personal carelessness, but that of an employee.

Can you and should you sue him?

Well, employees are impliedly required to take reasonable care in the course of their employment duties. So you can use the employee for breach of contract.

Whether you should sue is another question. Suing employees except in the most obvious cases is not something that will promote good relations with your staff. So this is not something you may wish to do.

On the other hand, if you have professional indemnity insurance, and the insurer covers your liability, you may find that your insurer has the right to sue your employees. The legal term "subrogation" states that once the insurer has paid for the loss, he steps into the shoes of the insured customer, and takes over this party's rights. So far as I know, this has not happened in Singapore yet.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Horizon Towers en-bloc sale- possible negligence?

The Court of Appeal has finally put an end to the Horizon Towers en bloc sale saga which has lasted over 2 years. The court accepted that the collective sale process was flawed and therefore the collective sale was invalid.

Now that the court has decided that the sales committee has not performed their duties properly, today's Sunday Times newspaper mentions the possibility of lawsuits against them by the other owners. However, the report states that the collective sale agreement signed by all owners agreeable to the sale may contain exemption clauses preventing lawsuits against the committee and their professional advisers and estate agents.

The issue is whether such exemption clauses are valid. They are usually controlled under the Unfair Contract Terms Act and have to be reasonable. Contracts relating to the transfers of interests in land may be excluded from the application of the Act (see Schedule 1). It is not clear
whether the collective sale agreement will be within this exclusion.

Even if the Act does not apply, the next issue is whether any advisers whether real estate or legal owe a duty to explain the risks involving in including exemption clauses in the collective sale agreement.

(Note - the exact judgment of the Court of Appeal is not yet out so the exact breaches of duties on the part of the sale committee are not clear).

(To clarify to those not familiar with the en bloc sale process under Singapore law, for most apartment developments, once 80% of owners agree to sell their apartments collectively, the remaining 20% is bound by law to go along. Since the number of owners will often be more than a 100, (in some cases numbering even 500-1000), a sales committee of a small umber of owners is formed to represent all the owners and to handle the sale process including negotiation with buyers, liasing with lawyers, etc is elected.)

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Gaelic Inns, JSI Shipping 2 - contributory negligence

The concept of contributory negligence is used by defendants to reduce the amount of damages payable to the plaintiff on the grounds that the plaintiff failed to take reasonable care of his own welfare.

In a traffic accident case, examples of contributory negligence might include
  • a plaintiff pedestrian who recklessly runs across a road, and
  • a car passenger who fails to wear his seat belt.
In the 2 cases headlined above, the court found that the plaintiff companies were themselves contributorily negligent in failing to take steps to stop the fraud complained off. In the JSI Shipping case, the court found that the overseas director did not even read the audit reports that he was complaining about. He also did not take prompt action to terminate Riggs' (the dishonest director)employment and to report the matter to the authorities. Although the auditors used s 391 of the Companies Act, the court found contributory negligence concepts were also relevant.

The concept of contributory negligence echoes concepts of "reasonable diligence" expected from all company directors under s.157 of the Companies Act

JSI Shipping case

In the case of
JSI Shipping (S) Pte Ltd v Teofoongwonglcloong (a firm)
[2007] 4 SLR 460; [2007] SGCA 40
,

Riggs, one of the plaintiff company's directors, who was the only one based in Singapore, had drawn excessive remuneration and made other unjustified claims which resulted in a loss of over $1.8m to the company. Unfortunately, Riggs fled the country and no monies were recovered from him.

The defendants were auditors of the plaintiff company over the relevent period of 3 financial years when they issued unqualified audit reports relating to the ccompany's financial statement.

The court found that the auditors were negligent in not verifying the amounts that Riggs was entitled to. They failed to seek alternative evidence when Riggs told that that he had no written employment contract. Furthermore, the court found that the fact that the defendants had asked the other director who was based overseas asked to sign off on the directors' report and draft accounts did not absolve the auditors from liability as they had not made it clear to the overseas director the importance of him verifying their correctness of what he had signed.

On the facts, the court therefore found that the auditors were liable for the loss.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The Gaelic Inns and JSI Shipping cases

As mentioned in a previous posting, the 2 cases of
  1. PlanAssure PAC v Gaelic Inn Pte Ltd and
  2. JSI Shipping (S) Pte Ltd v Teofoongwonglcloong
are Court of of Appeal cases involving the liability of auditors. In both cases, the auditors failed to spot fraud committed by the officers of the respective plaintiff companies and were therefore found liable to some extent for the losses caused by the fraud.

It is of course impossible for auditors to stop the first act of fraud and it is normally impossible to blame them except in exceptional cases. For example, if the auditors were hired to suggest improvements in a company's internal control systems but failed to point out serious weaknesses, thus allowing fraud to occur.

The normal way in which auditors are to be blamed for fraud losses is that if the fraud was discovered earlier by the auditors, then either later fraudulent acts would have been stopped or that it might have been possible to recover more of the stolen monies before the criminals had disposed of it. Notice here that the plaintiffs are using arguments as to what might have happened and not on certainties. This is well accepted by the court. Few things in life can be predicted with 100% certainty. The courts adopt a realistic approach by working with probabilities of events happening where appropriate.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Auditors - duty of care

As is well known, in order to sue for professional negligence, it is necessary for the plaintiff to show that 3 things -
  • a duty is owed by the defendant professional to the plaintiff;
  • the defendant breached his duty of care; and
  • damage or harm is caused to the plaintiff.
This post will examine the concept of duty of care being owed by auditors and accountants. A duty of care by a defendant to the plaintiff is owed when it is forseeable that harm may be caused to the plaintiff by the defendant's carelessness (what is sometimes called "the neighbour principle"). In plain English, this means that one can predict that if the professional is careless, the plaintiff might in some cases suffer harm. This area of law is complicated due to the courts also considering public policy and fairness, but that is a discussion for another day. In addition, suing for negligent words whether they are written or oral is also more complicated than suing for negligent actions.

What this post aims to do is to mention the leading case of Caparo Industries v Dickman [1990] 2 AC 605, a decision of the House of Lords, England's highest court. This case has been accepted by the Singapore courts. The court held in this case that auditors owe no duty of care to company shareholders in respect of the statutory audit. This means that any lawsuit brought by shareholders of a company against an auditor who is alleged to have performed a negligent audit of the company or given a negligently incorrect audit report is sure to fail. This only applies where the audit is the statutory audit required by the statutes relating to companies (the relevant statute in Singapore would be the Companies Act).

In the above case, the plaintiff was a shareholder who claimed that it had relied on the audit report relating to an investee company which it received, and based on this, proceeded to take over control of the company. The court dismissed the case on a preliminary issue without even deciding whether or not the auditors were careless, since the plaintiff had failed to establish duty of care, its lawsuit stood no chance of succeeding.

It should be noted that a shareholder could sue an auditor where the auditor is specially hired, eg for a due diligence audit - often used where the shareholder is planning to buy over the company. The shareholder could sue in contract law or in tort law.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Source of information about negligence claims

The Asian Casaulty Report is an annual on-line magazine published by Gen Re (an insurance company, which proudly announces that it is a Berkshire Hathaway company).

This magazine has short sniippets of insurance claims made in Asia. There is a listing by country and a division of reports by type of claims - eg product liability, construction liability, professional indemnity, medical malpractice, etc.

The most recent issue of this magazine is found at
http://www.genre.com/sharedfile/pdf/AsianCasReport2008-en.pdf
.

Some previous issues - http://www.genre.com/sharedfile/pdf/AsianCasRep2007-en.pdf and http://www.genre.com/sharedfile/pdf/AsianCasRep2006-en.pdf.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Tort law - negligent misstatement

Many professionals are confused about their liability under the law of negligence. Generally, for most professionals, their liability is not so much for pure negligence but more likely for negligent misstatement.

The law of negligence (what I will refer to as "pure negligence") covers careless acts or omissions. This means that the person concerned did or did not do something physical - for example, a surgeon who operates on the wrong organ of a patient.

The bulk of professionals however, do not perform physical acts for their client. The expertise comes from their knowledge and skill. The product of this is information provided to the client. This information can be in many forms such as reports, recomendations, advice, etc. Where the information whether written or oral is incorrect, then there may be liability for negligent misstatement.

The client will have to prove 3 main requirements in court to sue -
  • duty of care owed by the professional to the client,
  • breach of duty by the professional, and
  • damage or harm caused to the client by the professional's breach of duty.
The earlier posts about the Bolam and the Bolitho tests relate to the 2nd requirement of whether the professional has breached his duty of care.

There may sometimes be an overlap between pure negligence and negligent misstatement - for example, if a pharmacist gives the wrong pills to someone and says "take these for your illness"; but these situations are not common.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Partnerships and LLPs

Formerly, professionals were limited to using partnerships as their business vehicle. The problem with partnerships is that the partners face unlimited liability. This means that for partnership liability including claims of professional negligence, each partner was fully responsible for the liability. This was regardless of the individual partner's blameworthiness for the negligence and regardless of the size of the ownership of the partner in the partnership. In other words, a 5% partner in the partnership who never even met the complaining client could end up paying the entire claim against the partnership if he turned out to be the only person having the resources to pay the claim. Neither could partners protect their personal assets from their business liabilities.

However, now that the law allows partners to set up limited liability partnerships (LLPs), many professional firms have now converted to this form of business vehicle. For example the big 4 audit firms in Singapore are now all LLPs.

It should be noted however, that using an LLP may not shield the negligent professional from unlimited liability. Limited liability is important in contract law situations but it is possible that an unhappy client could sue the partner concerned in tort law, using the concept of negligent misstatment perhaps, which is likely to circumvent any limited liability protection. In Singapore, this area has not yet been tested in court.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Medical negligence - the Bolitho case

The case of Bolitho v. City and Hackney Health Authority [1997] 4 All ER 771 is a test applied in medical negligence lawsuits.

The Singapore Court of Appeal, Singapore's highest court, in Dr James Khoo v Gunapathy [2002] 2 SLR 414; [2002] SGCA 25, accepted the Bolam test (please see a previous post) as modified by the Bolitho case.

The qualification added by the Bolitho case is the practice accepted by a responsible body of medical men must be logical. If there is no logical basis for the practice, then the practice will not be defensible in court. This is the limited extent to which the courts will examine medical procedures.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Gunapathy v Dr James Khoo (post 2)

On appeal, the case was titled as

Dr Khoo James and Another v Gunapathy d/o Muniandy and another appeal
[2002] 2 SLR 414; [2002] SGCA 25.

The Court of Appeal severely criticized the trial judge and overturned his findings. Applying the Bolam and Bolitho tests (see a previous post on this), the court concluded that there was no negligence on the defendants' part.

The penultimate paragraph of the court's decision (which summarises the law on medical negligence in Singapore) reads :

"144 At the heart of the Bolam test is the recognition that judicial wisdom has its limits. A judge, unschooled and unskilled in the art of medicine, has no business adjudicating matters over which medical experts themselves cannot come to agreement. This is especially where, as in this case, the medical dispute is complex and resolvable only by long-term research and empirical observation. Furthermore, the lawyer-judge in ‘playing doctor’ at the frontiers of medical science might distort or even hamper its proper development. Excessive judicial interference raises the spectre of defensive medicine, with the attendant evils of higher medical costs and wastage of precious medical resources."

The expert witnesses for the parties were -

for Plaintiff - two neurosurgeons (Dr Prem Pillay and Dr Gopal Baratham), a radiation oncologist (Dr Tsao Shiu Ying), and a neuropathologist (Dr Jennifer Teo). The trial judge additionally called Dr Tan, the radiologist who took both MRI scans, to present herself as the plaintiff’s witness.

for the Defendants - three neurosurgeons (Prof Bengt Karlsson, Dr Ho Kee Hang, and Dr Yeo Tseng Tsai), two radiation oncologists (Dr Robert Smee and Dr Chua Eu Tiong), and a neuroradiologist (Dr Francis Hui).

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Bolam Test

The Bolam Test is a well-known test applied primarily in medical negligence lawsuits. It is sometimes applied in other areas of professional negligence although this should only be done with caution.

The Bolam test takes its name from Bolam v Friern Hospital ([1957] 1 WLR 583) where the judge held that a professional is not guilty of negligence if he has acted in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical men skilled in that particular art. In other words, even if some other medical professionals disagree with what was done, the defendant doctor can still win the lawsuit even some responsible doctors agree with this actions.

There are some who take the view that this approach unduly protects the medical profession. In Singapore, the Bolam test was accepted by the Singapore Court of Appeal in Dr James Khoo v Gunapathy [2002] 2 SLR 414; [2002] SGCA 25, subject to the constraints laid down in the later case of Bolitho v City and Hackney Health Authority [1998] AC 232; [1997] 4 All ER 771 . This later case will be discussed in a later posting

[The letters and numbers appearing after the name of a case are its citation. This is useful for lawyers when it comes to finding the case in the library. For instance, [2002] 2 SLR 414 means that the case is in the Singapore Law Reports volume 2 for the year 2002 at page 414.]

Gunapathy v Dr James Khoo (post 1)

In this case, the parties were -

Plaintiff - Gunapathy d/o Muniandy (Ms)

Defendants - Dr James Khoo, Dr Khor Tong Hong, and the Neurological Surgery Pte Ltd (which was Dr Khoo's clinic).

The defendants were sued for professional negligence in the diagnosis, treatment and advice given to the plaintiff in relation to her brain tumour. She claimed that the doctors had unnecessarily advised her to undergo radiosurgery treatment which unfortunately resulted in serious disability to her after the treatment. She suffered from among other symptoms, partial paralysis and from severe speech defects and was wheelchair bound. She was unable to run her family business and needed permanent medical care for the rest of her life.

At the High Court, Selvam J. in his 354 page judgment, awarded her damages which were over $2.5 million, taking into account her loss salary of $12,000 a month. This was perhaps the largest damages award for a personal injury claim and for a medical negligence case.

There were rumours that the defendants and their insurers offered to settle the case for about $2 million in damages but this was rejected. Regardless of whether this was accurate. the case went to the Court of Appeal.

Friday, February 13, 2009

medical negligence lawsuit against NUH

Persons involved in the National University Hospital lawsuit -

Plaintiffs - Surinder Singh (husband of deceased patient Narindar Kaur), Minda Kour (mother of the deceased)

Defendants - NUH, doctors Li Man Kay and David Consigliere

Lawyers (counsel) -
Plaintiffs- S. Palaniappan of Straits Law Practice.
Defendants : NUH - Kelvin Poon, Edwin Tong for doctors

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Estate agents - the ERA case 3

What if you are a client of a real estate company and after reading about the ERA case, you wish to sue the company for the same sort of tactics that took place many years ago. You may face the problem of the Limitation Act.

This statute places a time limit of 6 years for most contract claims. You have 6 years to sue from the time the cause of action accrued (your right to sue arose). A cause of action accrues when the other party fails to do what he promised. For example, if there was a promise to pay by 31 January 2009, and this promise is not kept, then the cause of action accrues the next day.

In the ERA case or a similar situation, the cause of action would accrue when the plaintiffs entered into a contract to sell their property to a party related to the agent.

What if your transaction took place more than 6 years ago? The Limitation Act has exceptions where you can sue more than 6 years later if there is fraud (deceitful conduct by the other party). If the amount of money involved is substantial, do consult your lawyer.

Please note our disclaimer.

Estate agents - the ERA case 2

You wish to sue an estate agency for the misconduct of the agency's agents. Can you do so?

In the ERA Realty Network case, trial judge found that the company was liable for its agents' misconduct (Mike and Jeremy were given appointment titles with the word "director), even though the company tried to claim that they were independent contractors.

The judge said that on the relevant documents, the company's logo was present. Also, when the clients refused to pay the agency commission, it was the company that started a lawsuit in the Small Claims Tribunal. All this made them liable for their agents' actions under the law of agency.

Another point not mentioned by the judge but I think is crucially important - individual estate agents do not have to be licensed but must work under a licensed agency. If you are a real estate company and you allow rogue agents to work under your agency name and to use your license, it is very unlikely that you can turn around and disclaim all responsibility for any wrongs that they do.

Estate agents - ERA sued and loses

The hottest news relating to professionals now is the recent case concerning the big real estate agency ERA Realty Network. Although this was not a case of professional negligence, the trial judge, Justice Choo Han Teck, found the agency guilty of misconduct.

Briefly, the plaintiffs in this case, were owners of an apartment who asked an ERA agent Ang Teik Soon (also known as Jeremy) to find a buyer for their apartment. Instead of trying to get the best price possible for his clients, Jeremy collaborated with his boss, Mitul Ratilal Parikh, known as “Mike, to buy the apartment using Mike's wife's name
Natassha Sadiq . After the deal was done, Jeremy and Mike arranged to sell the apartment to an innocent purchaser at a profit of about $250,000.

The plaintiffs, who did quite a lot of detective work managed to dig out this information and won their case when the court ordered ERA to pay the profits made by Mike and Jeremy to the plaintiffs.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Medical negligence lawsuit - NUH

A lawsuit was filed last year against National University Hospital (NUH) and 2 specialist doctors in respect of a kidney transplant between a donor wife and her husband. The husband, Surinder Singh, received the kidney successfully but his wife, Narinder Kaur, bled to death soon after the operation. It is understood that the High Court has recently been asked to set trial dates.

The coroner's inquest found that clips used to close off the wife's major artery had slipped off.

The hospital and 2 doctors are represented by law firms Allen and Gledhill, and Rajah and Tann.
The husband is represented by S. Palaniappan of Straits Law Practice.


Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Lawyers negligence - Chong Yeo and Partners

An old case involving lawyers' negligence is the case of Chong Yeo and Partners v Guan Ming Hardware and Engineering Pte Ltd.

Here, the solicitors failed to file certain documents in relation to a summary judgment application (a type of proceeding where the plaintiffs claim that the case against the defendant is clear and the defendant should be ordered to pay up without further legal proceedings) against their clients' debtor. This failure led to a delay in the proceedings. The debtor soon after went into liquidation.

The clients then sued the solicitors for the delay. However, the court held that although there was negligence, it was not proven that the negligence led to the loss. Even if there was no delay in the hearing of the summary judgment proceeding, there was no proof that the debtor would have been able to pay up.

This case once again shows the difficulty of claiming one's loss from one's professional advisers even where they are negligent. To be fair, we cannot make professional advisers liable for all losses - the losses must be proved to be caused by their negligence.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Professional negligence - hardest profession to sue

What is the most difficult profession to sue in Singapore?

I am no expert in this area but talking to experienced lawyers, it seems that the consensus is that doctors are the most difficult to sue. Why?

In order to prove professional negligence, you have to show that the professional was careless in some way. Almost always, this means hiring someone else who is respected and in the same profession to come to court to testify. This expert will then have to point out the mistakes of the defendant professional.

It is extremely difficult to hire one doctor to point out the mistakes of another doctor in court. Perhaps this is because the profession here is small and closely knit. Result - expensive doctors have to be consulted from overseas, and if necessary, flown to Singapore for preparation as well as for the trial. A big legal bill is likely to be the result.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Negligence case - Robertson Quay v Steen Consultants

The 2008 Court of Appeal case of Robertson Quay Investment Pte Ltd v Steen Consultants Pte Ltd was an interesting case not on complicated issues of negligence but on the issue of loss.

Here, Steen Consultants were employed by Robertson Quay to provide civil and structural engineering services for the construction of the Gallery Hotel. However,Steen Consultants made a blunder - they submitted an old set of structural drawings to the building contractor instead of the latest updated set. As a result, there was a delay of 101 days in the completion of construction of the Hotel.

Steen Consultants admitted their legal responsibility and in court, it was only up to Robertson Quay to prove their loss. The latter made claims for management fees, consulting fees, staff salaries and interest on shareholders' loans during the delay period.

A major problem was that the latter was not able to prove that the interest expense incurred during the delay period was not proven in court. The court held that Robertson Quay should have showed that if there was no error by Steen Consultants, then the interest expense would not have been incurred.

This issue of causation is often overlooked by claimants. It is not enough to show that you incurred some costs. You must show that if there was no professional negligence, this cost would not have been incurred and therefore the defendant is responsible for this loss.



Thursday, January 15, 2009

The Court of Appeal (Singapore's highest court) in 2007 was the scene of 2 major cases against auditors for negligence in relation to statutory audit reports. In both cases, the Court found

These cases are -
  1. PlanAssure PAC v Gaelic Inn Pte Ltd and
  2. JSI Shipping (S) Pte Ltd v Teofoongwonglcloong.
In both cases, the Court found that the auditors were negligent but in each case, the client company was also found to be contributorily negligent for the fraud of its officers. The result of this is that the auditors were not liable to pay for the entire loss caused.

The issue of contributory negligence and also the facts of these 2 cases will be examined shortly.

AIM AND INTRODUCTION

This blog aims to cover the area of professional negligence in Singapore from a legal perspective.

It will have the following
  1. general comments on the law of professional negligence
  2. summaries of local or interesting foreign cases on the area
  3. updates of local court proceedings related to this topic.

INVITATION
- If you are involved in any lawsuit involving professional negligence, you are welcome to submit a short summary of the parties and the allegations made in addition to the suit number.



DISCLAIMER - This blog is only intended to offer information and not legal advice. We accept no liability for any reliance on the information contained here, and advise you to contact your own legal advisers where necessary.