Case Details
- Citation: [2024] SGHC 299
- Title: Sang Cheol Woo v Charles Choi Spackman & 8 Ors
- Court: High Court (General Division)
- Suit No: Suit No 211 of 2019
- Registrar’s Appeal No: Registrar’s Appeal No 186 of 2024
- Date of Judgment: 11 November 2024
- Date Judgment Reserved: 26 November 2024
- Judge: Kwek Mean Luck J
- Plaintiff/Applicant: Sang Cheol Woo
- Defendants/Respondents: Charles Choi Spackman; Kim Jae Seung; Kim So Hee; Richard Lee; Funvest Global Pte Ltd; Spackman Media Group Limited; Plutoray Pte Ltd; Vaara Pte Ltd; Starlight Corp Pte Ltd
- Procedural Posture: Appeal against an Assistant Registrar’s decision granting leave to amend the 2nd and 3rd Defendants’ Defence
- Legal Areas: Civil Procedure; Amendments of pleadings; Abuse of process; Implied undertaking / Riddick principle; Discovery and disclosure
- Key Procedural Instruments: O 20 r 5(1) Rules of Court (2014 Rev Ed) (“ROC 2014”)
- Judgment Length: 23 pages, 6,317 words
Summary
This decision concerns an appeal by the Plaintiff, Sang Cheol Woo, against the High Court Assistant Registrar’s grant of leave for the 2nd and 3rd Defendants to amend their Defence in Suit No 211 of 2019 (“S211”). The amendments were sought after the High Court had already determined, in a bifurcated “first stage” trial, the enforceability in Singapore of a foreign judgment obtained against the 1st Defendant. The appeal therefore raised questions about when “proceedings” remain “afoot” for the purposes of amendments, and whether the proposed amendments were an abuse of process.
At the heart of the dispute was the Defendants’ attempt to introduce a new defence premised on an alleged contingency fee arrangement involving foreign counsel, and to argue that the Plaintiff’s claim was tainted by maintenance and/or champerty, and thus an abuse of process. The Plaintiff resisted the amendments on the basis that they effectively sought to re-litigate matters already resolved in the first stage, and that the Defendants were attempting to obtain a “second bite at the cherry”.
The High Court (Kwek Mean Luck J) upheld the Assistant Registrar’s decision to allow the amendments. In doing so, the court addressed the scope of the amendment power under O 20 r 5(1) ROC 2014, the principles governing abuse of process in the context of amendments, and the application of the “Riddick principle” (the implied undertaking of confidentiality attached to disclosed documents) to non-parties and to documents disclosed without a formal court order. The court’s reasoning reflects a careful balancing between finality of adjudication and the need to ensure that relevant issues are properly ventilated for determination at the appropriate stage of trial.
What Were the Facts of This Case?
S211 arose from the Plaintiff’s attempt to enforce in Singapore a Seoul High Court Judgment (“SHCJ”) against the 1st Defendant. The litigation was bifurcated. In the first stage trial, the High Court determined, among other things, whether the SHCJ was enforceable in Singapore. The other defendants were given leave to provide submissions at the end of the first stage and agreed to be bound by the first stage decision. On 30 November 2022, the High Court allowed the Plaintiff’s claim for enforcement of the SHCJ in Singapore (Sang Cheol Woo v Charles Choi Spackman and ors [2022] SGHC 298).
After the first stage judgment, the second stage of S211 remained pending. The second stage was concerned with the Defendants’ liability for conspiracy, including claims framed in both lawful and unlawful means conspiracy. Thus, although the enforceability of the SHCJ had been decided, the overall proceedings in S211 were not at an end; the court had yet to determine the substantive liability issues that would flow from the enforcement stage.
In parallel proceedings, Suit No 592 of 2020 (“S592”), a defamation claim was brought by Spackman Entertainment Group Limited (“SEGL”) against the Plaintiff. In the Plaintiff’s 6th affidavit filed in S592 on 4 April 2024 (“Plaintiff 6th Affidavit”), the Plaintiff stated that he had entered into a contingency fee arrangement with “KK”, identified as Kobre & Kim LLP, his foreign counsel. The Defendants’ position was that this statement potentially contradicted what the Plaintiff had said during the first stage trial in S211, where he had stated that he was “not in any agreement to share the fruits of this proceeding with any third party”.
On that basis, the 2nd and 3rd Defendants applied to amend their Defence in S211. The proposed amendments sought to introduce two connected propositions: first, that the Plaintiff entered into the KK Fee Arrangement, which the Defendants argued was prohibited and/or unenforceable under Singapore law; and second, that the Plaintiff’s claim in S211 was therefore tainted by maintenance and/or champerty and should be treated as an abuse of process. The Assistant Registrar granted leave to amend, and the Plaintiff appealed.
What Were the Key Legal Issues?
The appeal raised five principal legal questions. First, the court had to decide whether “proceedings” for the purposes of O 20 r 5(1) ROC 2014 were still “afoot” when the first stage trial on enforceability had been determined, but the second stage on conspiracy liability had not yet been concluded. This issue mattered because the amendment power is tied to the existence of ongoing proceedings.
Second, the court had to determine whether the amendment application amounted to an abuse of process. This required the court to consider whether the amendments were effectively an attempt to undermine the finality of the first stage judgment, or whether they were properly directed at issues that remained live for determination in the second stage.
Third, the court had to consider whether the “Riddick principle” applied to non-parties. The Riddick principle, originating from Riddick v Thames Board Mills Ltd [1997] QB 881, concerns the implied undertaking that documents disclosed in the course of litigation are to be used only for the purposes of the litigation, and not for collateral purposes. The Plaintiff argued that the Defendants should not be able to rely on information disclosed in the Plaintiff 6th Affidavit because of this implied undertaking.
Fourth, the court had to address whether the Riddick principle applied to documents that were disclosed for the purpose of resisting a specific discovery application, but not under compulsion of a court order. Fifth, the court had to decide whether there was a “real question to be determined” by the proposed amendments—an inquiry that goes to whether the amendments are genuinely relevant and not merely speculative or tactical.
How Did the Court Analyse the Issues?
1. Whether proceedings were still “afoot”
The court approached the “afoot” question by focusing on the structure of S211. Although the first stage trial had ended with a judgment on enforceability, the second stage trial had not yet proceeded. The litigation as a whole remained ongoing, and the second stage would determine substantive liability issues, including conspiracy. The court therefore treated the proceedings as still active for the purposes of amendment, rather than concluding that the enforceability judgment had frozen the entire action.
2. Abuse of process and the “second bite” argument
The Plaintiff’s abuse of process argument was that the amendments were targeted at the enforcement claim already resolved by the first stage judgment, and that the Defendants were seeking to re-litigate matters that could and should have been raised earlier. The court, however, accepted that the amendments were directed at issues that could bear on the Plaintiff’s entitlement and the integrity of the case as it proceeded to the second stage. The court also considered that the Defendants had not acted in bad faith, noting that the amendments were brought after the first stage judgment, when the relevant factual context crystallised.
Importantly, the court did not treat the possibility of reopening the first stage judgment as determinative. Instead, it assessed whether allowing amendments would cause irreparable prejudice that could not be compensated by costs or case management directions. This reflects a pragmatic approach: amendments are not automatically abusive merely because they relate to matters that overlap with earlier determinations, provided the amendments are not being used to undermine the court’s process unfairly and the trial can be managed to address them properly.
3. The Riddick principle and its application to non-parties
The Plaintiff contended that the Defendants should not be permitted to rely on the Plaintiff 6th Affidavit because the implied undertaking attached to the disclosure. The court analysed whether the Riddick principle binds non-parties. It relied on the reasoning in ED&F Man Capital Markets Ltd v Straits (Singapore) Pte Ltd [2020] 2 SLR 695 (“ED&F”), which had held that the undertaking binds third parties who were not party to the suit in which the document or information was disclosed by compulsion.
The court’s analysis indicates that the implied undertaking is not confined to formal parties to the action in which disclosure occurred. Rather, it extends to those who seek to use the disclosed material in a way that would breach the confidentiality rationale underlying the undertaking. This is significant for practitioners because it means that the protective purpose of the undertaking cannot be circumvented by the involvement of entities or individuals who were not technically “parties” to the original disclosure proceedings.
4. Riddick principle where disclosure was not under a court order
A further complication was that the Plaintiff 6th Affidavit was not accompanied by a court order compelling disclosure. The Assistant Registrar had found that the Riddick principle was not engaged on the basis of compulsion. The High Court examined the broader question: whether the implied undertaking attaches only when disclosure is compelled by a court order, or whether it also attaches when disclosure is made to resist a discovery application.
The court considered the Court of Appeal’s approach in Lim Suk Ling Priscilla and anor v Amber Compounding Pharmacy Pte Ltd and anor and anor appeal [2020] 2 SLR 912 (“Priscilla Lim”), which had referred to ED&F and stated that the core principle applies equally to documents disclosed to resist interlocutory applications, even if not made under compulsion of a court order. This supported the view that the undertaking’s rationale—protecting the integrity of the discovery process and preventing collateral use—can apply in circumstances where a formal order was not obtained but where disclosure was made in the context of litigation pressure.
In addition, the court drew support from comparative reasoning, including Helicopter Aerial Surveys Pty Ltd v Garry Robertson [2015] NSWSC 2104, which treated the implied undertaking as attaching not only to documents produced as a result of compulsory process but also to documents produced in response to an informal request for disclosure where a formal order could have been obtained. The court also referenced Ong Jane Rebecca v Lim Lie Hoa and others [2021] 2 SLR 584, which applied similar principles to affidavits filed under compulsion.
Applying these principles, the court treated the Riddick undertaking as capable of attaching to the relevant disclosure context, subject to the factual matrix of how and why the information was disclosed. This analysis is particularly useful for lawyers dealing with affidavit evidence and disclosure disputes: the label “under compulsion” is not always the sole determinant; the litigation context and the protective purpose of the undertaking are equally important.
5. Whether there was a real question to be determined
Finally, the court addressed whether the proposed amendments raised a real question to be determined. The amendments concerned the existence and effect of the KK Fee Arrangement and whether it could be characterised as maintenance and/or champerty under Singapore public policy. The court noted that the English position in Lyubov Andreevna Kireeva v Zolotova & Anor [2024] EWHC 552 (Ch) could be adopted, or even a stricter approach could be taken. The key point was that the issue was not purely academic: it required evidence and full submissions, and it was appropriate to be ventilated at trial rather than shut out at the amendment stage.
In reaching this conclusion, the court also considered the Plaintiff’s reliance on the argument that the doctrine of champerty and maintenance is concerned with the purity of justice and the interests of vulnerable litigants, and that fee arrangements with foreign counsel may fall outside the doctrine where there is no “direct or necessary relationship” to Singapore litigation. The court did not decide the substantive champerty question at the amendment stage; instead, it held that the defence was not unsustainable and that there was at least a real question for determination.
What Was the Outcome?
The High Court dismissed the Plaintiff’s appeal and upheld the Assistant Registrar’s decision granting leave to the 2nd and 3rd Defendants to amend their Defence. The practical effect is that the Defendants may plead the KK Fee Arrangement and advance the maintenance/champerty and abuse of process arguments as part of the case to be determined in the ongoing second stage of S211.
By allowing the amendments, the court ensured that the alleged fee arrangement and its legal consequences would be fully ventilated with evidence and submissions at trial, rather than being excluded on procedural finality grounds tied to the first stage enforceability judgment.
Why Does This Case Matter?
This case is significant for civil procedure in Singapore because it clarifies how amendment principles operate in bifurcated proceedings. Even after a first-stage judgment on a discrete issue, the court may still treat the action as “afoot” for the purposes of amendment where the overall proceedings remain pending. Practitioners should therefore avoid assuming that a partial judgment automatically forecloses later amendments, particularly where the amendments relate to issues that remain live for determination.
Second, the decision provides useful guidance on abuse of process arguments in the amendment context. The court’s approach suggests that allegations of “second bite” will not succeed unless the amendments are shown to be genuinely oppressive or unfairly undermining the court’s process, rather than merely overlapping with earlier factual or legal matters. The court’s willingness to consider whether prejudice can be managed through costs and directions is a practical benchmark for future amendment disputes.
Third, the judgment contributes to the development of the Riddick principle in Singapore, especially regarding (i) whether the implied undertaking binds non-parties and (ii) whether it applies to disclosures made to resist discovery applications without a formal compulsion order. The court’s reliance on Priscilla Lim and ED&F indicates that the undertaking’s protective rationale can extend beyond strict procedural triggers. Lawyers should therefore treat disclosed affidavit material and discovery-related submissions as potentially protected, and carefully assess whether and how such material can be deployed in other proceedings.
Legislation Referenced
- Rules of Court (2014 Rev Ed), O 20 r 5(1)
Cases Cited
- Sang Cheol Woo v Charles Choi Spackman and ors [2022] SGHC 298
- Choo Cheng Tong Wilfred v Phua Swee Khiang and another [2022] SGHC(A) 5
- Lyubov Andreevna Kireeva v Zolotova & Anor [2024] EWHC 552 (Ch)
- ED&F Man Capital Markets Ltd v Straits (Singapore) Pte Ltd [2020] 2 SLR 695
- Riddick v Thames Board Mills Ltd [1997] QB 881
- Dennis v Ang Yee Lim and another [2015] 2 SLR 578
- Lim Suk Ling Priscilla and anor v Amber Compounding Pharmacy Pte Ltd and anor and anor appeal [2020] 2 SLR 912
- Foo Jong Long (as referenced in the judgment extract)
- Ong Jane Rebecca v Lim Lie Hoa and others [2021] 2 SLR 584
- Helicopter Aerial Surveys Pty Ltd v Garry Robertson [2015] NSWSC 2104
- Re Vanguard Energy Pte Ltd [2015] 4 SLR 597
- Mansell v Robinson [2007] All ER (D) 279 (Jan)
- In re Trepca Mines Ltd (No 2) [1963] Ch 199
Source Documents
This article analyses [2024] SGHC 299 for legal research and educational purposes. It does not constitute legal advice. Readers should consult the full judgment for the Court's complete reasoning.