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     NEWS SNIPPETS

    2001

  A report prepared by the Registrar of the Supreme Court showed that although, on average, every court can hear cases for 208 days a year, about 10 per cent of the overall court time was not used as a result of no-trial days. 15 High Court courtrooms were empty for a total of 346 days last year. The Singapore judiciary has no backlog of cases because it cleared 25,000 cases between 1992 and last year, under Chief Justice YONG Pung How's leadership. The courts have only 642 outstanding cases now and most of them are expected to be cleared by the end of next year. (Straits Times 25 Dec 2001)(4)

  Long-winded and disorganised lawyers who like to submit a mountain of documents to the appeals courts have just been given the red card by the Chief Justice. From next Saturday, they will be allowed to submit no more than 150 pages in their main bundle of documents. Those who breach the limit will be charged - S$10 for each extra page. The court's Rules Committee, which is chaired by CJ YONG Pung How, has directed these charges to be imposed under the Rules of Court (Straits Times 8 Dec 2001(H1)

  In the High Court on Thursday, Justice TAN Lee Meng clarified the law affecting dealers and remisiers when their clients go bust. A remisier has to settle his clients' losses as he is an independent agent. But, as an employee of a company, a dealer cannot be held liable for losses made following his firm's instructions. This applies when he is told to service his firm's clients, like banks, statutory boards and publicly listed companies. But a dealer cannot act beyond the authority given him. So if he trades beyond the approved amount or makes unauthorised transactions, he has to settle resulting debts. He also has to bear his clients' bad debts as he would have been acting on their behalf, and not his employer's.(Straits Times 1 Dec 2001)(3)

  A working group has been formed to review Singapore's legal profession and make it more competitive. The group will be co-chaired by Solicitor-General CHAN Seng Onn and Senior Counsel K. Shanmugam, and comprise lawyers and law academics. Its recommendations will go to the Economic Review Committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister LEE Hsien Loong. (Straits Times 28 Nov 2001)(3)

  Chief Justice YONG Pung How yesterday sent a strong message to molesters, saying that from now on they can expect to be jailed for a minimum of nine months. Stiffer sentences were needed to deter potential offenders, he said, as the number of molestation cases had risen by 25 per cent this year. (Straits Times 31 Oct 2001) (4)

  A lawyer who was caught shoplifting at Tangs department store had her two-week jail sentence doubled yesterday. Lilian ONG, 51, who was found guilty of shoplifting after a four-day trial in May, had appealed against her conviction. The prosecution, meanwhile, had appealed against the leniency of ONG's sentence. But ONG dropped her appeal, leaving the court to decide whether to allow the prosecutor's appeal. ONG stole two cheese slicers and a kettle worth a total of S$180 from Tangs on March 14 last year. (Straits Times 31 Oct 2001) (H10)

  Family quarrels made up 139 out of 500, or 28 per cent, of the cases that community mediation centres handled in 2000. Most of the cases - 211 out of 500, or 42 per cent - dealt with disputes between neighbours. The other cases involved friends, shopkeepers or hawkers, landlords and tenants, and employers and employees. This is the first time the centres have offered such a breakdown of the cases handled, so there are no comparable figures for 1998 and 1999.  (Straits Times 7 Oct 2001) (20)

  Stress, said a recent Law Society survey, is the reason cited most often by lawyers leaving the profession. Already,335 lawyers have quit this year, more than double the 141 last year, and more than three times the 114 who quit in 1999. About 29 per cent of the lawyers who stopped practising did so because they had difficulty coping with the demands of their clients, the survey found. The survey covered only 31 of them, but practising lawyers told The Straits Times they could not agree more with its findings. The survey also interviewed 89 managing partners and owners of law firms.  (Straits Times 7 Oct 2001)(4) 

  The Law Society has revised its guidelines to give the 800 or so law firms here the option to accept credit-card payments from their clients. It said in a statement," In recent years, the number of credit-card holders has increased, and client have begun to express a desire to pay their legal fees via the credit card." But lawyers can accept payment only by Visa and Mastercard credit cards. (Straits Times 4 Oct 2001)(H5)

  Information on court hearings can be obtained virtually and instantly now, as the Supreme Court has gone the SMS route. Starting two days ago, lawyers and the public could use the short message service (SMS) to access information on who the duty judge or registrar is for the day and who the presiding judge is for a particular case. The service is part of the Supreme Court's Mobile Information Services, or Supreme Court M-InfoSvcs. (Straits Times 30 Aug 2001)(H7)

  Teenagers and youths caught having sex with an underaged girl can plead ignorance of the victim's age, but adult men cannot offer such a defence in court. Legal experts said that the law here has made it clear that men above 21 years old who are caught for such offences will be jailed for up to five years and fined up to S$10,000. (Straits Times 13 Aug 2001)(H4)

  A parachute jump instructor with the School of Commandos who was sentenced to three weeks' jail in May 2001 for using criminal force on a police officer and fined S$500 for disorderly behaviour appealed. Chief Justice YONG Pung How, who heard Second Warrant Officer Raymond Michael D'Cotta's appeal, noted that he had given 24 years of good service and was a first offender. Jail, even for one day, would mean the end of D'Cotta's pension. So he set aside the jail term. But, D'Cotta, 41, a father of three, will still have to pay the S$500 fine. The CJ said the case was "very unusual" and observed that the man had not meant to hurt the policeman. "His real offence was his drunkenness and while he was drunk, he lost control of himself." (Straits Times 8 Aug 2001)(3)

  A person who offers bribes to corrupt those who maintain law and order here deserves equal or even heavier punishment than the people they buy off, Chief Justice YONG Pung How said. He made the point in his written reasons for increasing Geylang loan shark CHUA Tiong Tiong's 18-month jail term for bribing a cop. Earlier this month, he upped the man's sentence to four years and imposed a S$100,000 fine. (Straits Times 31 Jul 2001)(4)

  A lawyer allegedly cheated a bank into lending him S$1.5 million to buy a Tanglin condominium by not disclosing that he was holding the property in trust for a foreigner who was a permanent resident. Billy NG Chee Sing, 39, also allegedly got two other men to cheat another bank into giving them loans totalling S$2.55 million for the same British businessman. NG, an undischarged bankrupt, was struck off the rolls over these loans. Three amended charges were read to him at the start of his district-court trial yesterday. The trial continues today. (Straits Times 4 Jul 2001)

  Men who chat up underaged girls on the Internet and have sex with them can expect a year in jail and a S$10,000 fine if they are caught. Chief Justice YONG Pung How set this benchmark yesterday when he dismissed the appeal of 45-year-old TAY Kim Kuan, upped his sentence from nine to 12 months, and hit him with the maximum S$10,000 fine. TAY, who is married and works for a construction consultancy firm, admitted having sex with a 15-year-old secondary school student he met online. CJ YONG made it clear that, as long as the accused had sex with an underaged girl, there was little excuse, even if the girl was not a virgin and was "wanton" and "completely loose". (Straits Times 29 Jun 2001)

  Since the Corrective Work Order (CWO) punishment for litterbugs was introduced in 1992, about 50,000 litterbugs have been caught. Over the last eight years, the number of litterbugs made to pick up trash went up from 166 in 1993 to 427 last year. And by 1996, the first repeat offenders were coming back to don the familiar yellow jackets for the second time. From nine that year, it went up to 23 last year. Another worrying trend - almost three-quarters of litterbugs caught this year were below 30 years of age and some youths found performing the CWO cool rather than shameful. (Straits Times 14 Jun 2001)

  Prominent Singaporean jurist and legal scholar Amarjeet SINGH was elected on Tuesday in New York to serve on the UN war crimes tribunal for the Balkans, the first Singaporean nominated to an international legal post. (Straits Times 14 Jun 2001)

  In the first case of its kind, an electrician has been charged for illegally connecting a residence to the Singapore Cable Vision (SCV) network. On Wednesday, Richard ONG Wei Teong pleaded guilty in a magistrate's court to tampering with a telecommunications installation. He was fined S$4,000. (Straits Times 8 Jun 2001)

  A lawyer was on 5 Jun 2001 sentenced to two weeks' in prison for stealing two cheese slicers and a kettle from Tangs department store. District Judge CHAY Yuen Fatt imposed the jail sentence on Lilian ONG, 51, after having convicted her of shoplifting last week. ONG, who was called to the Bar in 1974, could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined for the offence. She was found guilty last week of stealing the household items, worth about S$180, from the Orchard Road store on 14 Mar 2000. She has filed an appeal against her conviction and is out on S$10,000 bail. (Straits Times 5 Jun 2001)

  More than 170 new lawyers were called to the Bar yesterday. Chief Justice YONG Pung How yesterday said that a total of 3,233 lawyers now hold practising certificates. He hoped that with the new entrants, the figure would rise to over 3,380. Not all 173 are expected to apply for practising certificates. Quoting a Manpower Ministry study, CJ YONG said Singapore would need between 99 and 115 lawyers for every 100,000 people. As of last year, it had 84 per 100,000. He said that the recent phenomenon of lawyers choosing to leave legal practice for non-legal sectors and for alternative employment as in-house legal counsel in private-sector enterprises had intensified the current shortage of lawyers in Singapore today. (Straits Times 3 Jun 2001)

  Preventive detention or long jail terms with no chance of early release for good behaviour should not be restricted to offenders with a history of violent behaviour, said Chief Justice YONG Pung How yesterday. He ruled that repeat perpetrators of non-violent crimes, such as theft and drug-related offences, also deserve such punishments. CJ YONG made this ruling when he dismissed the appeal of recalcitrant criminal TAN Ngin Hai, who wanted his eight-year preventive detention sentence reduced. The CJ had noted that two out of every five criminals taken to court here had previous criminal records. (Straits Times 2 Jun 2001)

  High Court judge CHAN Seng Onn, 47, will leave the bench next month to assume the No.2  position in the Attorney-General's Chambers as its Solicitor-General. His appointment will fill the position that has been left vacant for nearly ten years since former Solicitor-General KOH Eng Tian retired in December 1991. (Straits Times 15 May 2001)

  The Supreme Court has been awarded the ISO 9001:2000 certification at the organisational level. In 1999, it achieved the People Developer Standard. The Singapore Quality Class followed last year. Last December, it obtained the ISO 9002:1994 certification for its Verbatim Reporters Unit. (Straits Times 8 May 2001)

  A National University of Singapore (NUS) group beat 68 others from law schools all over the world at the prestigious Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition held in Washington from 1 - 7 Apr 2001. NUS's fourth triumph - it also won in 1982, 1985 and 1994 - puts its record ahead that of any other law school since the competition began in 1959 at Harvard University. The team comprises Subbrahmanyam, 22, CHAN Ho Ming, 24, Kabir Singh, 24, Davinia Aziz, 21, and Jason CHAN, 23. (Straits Times 17 Apr 2001)

  Chief Justice YONG Pung How turned 75 0n 11 Apr 2001 and was re-appointed head of Singapore's judiciary for three more years. He was first appointed Chief Justice in 1990. 

  A lawyer who had earlier been jailed for four months for contempt of court appeared before a district court on 9 Apr 2001 on charges of misappropriating nearly S$240,000 of his clients' money. Krishnasamy Balarasalu alias Bhaktavatsalu, 51, is being remanded at the Criminal Investigation Department and his case will be mentioned again next Monday. (Straits Times 10 Apr 2001)

  A woman lawyer allegedly walked out of Tangs department store with a kettle and two cheese slicers without paying for them, a district court heard on 2 Apr 2001. Lilian ONG, 51, who was called to the Bar in January 1974, pleaded not guilty to stealing the three items worth about S$180 that evening. The hearing continues. (Straits Times 3 Apr 2001)

  From 1 Apr 2001, more applicants will qualify for legal aid because the income limit will be raised. The new rules allow people with a disposable household (husband & wife's income) income of not more than S$10,000 a year (after subtracting allowable deductions) to qualify for legal aid, up from the current S$7,000. Currently, one-third of the applicants are not granted legal aid as they have failed the means test applied by the bureau. Its director, Ms TAN Peck Cheng, said that with the revision, only two out of every 10 applicants will be turned away. Between 1988 and 1999, 81,503 people applied for legal aid. More than six out of 10 were women. Most of the women sought help to initiate separation proceedings, file for divorce or to get custody of their children. Of the cases that the bureau handled between 1988 and 1999, more than half had to do with marriages that had gone sour. Claims for money made up 11.1% of the cases, the next-largest group of cases, followed by property matters (5.5%), probate cases (4.6%), deed polls (2.2%) and adoptions (1.5%). (Straits Times 25 Mar 2001)

  Subordinate courts judge Thyagarajan Shanmugam died of a heart attack on Wednesday night while on holiday in Australia. He was 53. District Judge Thyagarajan was in Melbourne to attend his son's convocation when he collapsed suddenly. Survived by his wife Shirley and three grown children, he had been a judge with the Subordinate Courts since 1993 and was transferred to the Family Court this January. (Straits Times 23 Mar 2001)

  Law Degrees from more universities recognised here. Ministry of Law Media Release 9 Mar 2001.

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