SINGAPORE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Koh Swee Yen SC, Wendy Lin, Tiong Teck Wee and Monica Chong Wan Yee, WongPartnership LLP
Developments relating to civil procedure Debts that may be attached to enforcement orders – Art Ask Agency SL v Person(s) Unknown (“LXS-WL STORE”) and others [2023] SGHCR 14 (“Art Ask Agency”) and Mitsui E&S Power Systems Inc v Neptun International Pte Ltd and another (DBS Bank Ltd, non-party) [2024] 5 SLR 897 (“Mitsui E&S”) In Art Ask Agency, the High Court held that an objector to any attachment of debt under Order 22 rule 10(4) of the Rules of Court 2021 (ROC 2021) bears the burden of providing sufficient basis for the objection. The Court also clarified that the requirements under Order 49 of the Rules of Court 2014 (ROC 2014) continue to apply to Order 22 of the ROC 2021. The objec- tor is not required to do “more than what would have been required at the show cause stage of a garnishee proceeding”. The Court further extended the common law principles applicable under ROC 2014 to Order 22 rule 6(4)(f) of ROC 2021, reasoning that ROC 2021 served only to streamline the various modes of enforcement into a single application, but did not make significant changes to the sub- stantive law governing each mode of enforce- ment. Therefore, debts payable at a future time but arising from an existing obligation could be attached under Order 22 of ROC 2021, but debts arising from a contingent obligation could not. Accordingly, debts in the enforcement respond- ents’ accounts that were “due” when the Notice of Attachment was served were attached, but not debts that became due or may become due on the happening of a contingency that had not yet materialised when the Notice was served. In Mitsui E&S, the High Court found that debts could still be attached despite an order by the authorities directing the non-party bank not to allow any dealings with the monies in the account
the Tribunal did as being the usual type of con- cealed dishonest plagiarism and certainly would not have held that what the Tribunal did crossed the very high threshold required for a finding of a breach of public policy”. SICC settled novel issue of whether arbitral tribunal’s unilateral correction to award would extend three-month timeframe to set aside an award – DBX and another v DBZ [2024] 3 SLR 141 (“DBX”) It is established that a party who wishes to set aside a Singapore arbitral award must file its application within three months from the date of the receipt of the award (“Timeframe”), and that said Timeframe cannot be extended. An excep- tion arises where a party makes a substantive request to the tribunal falling within the scope of Articles 33(1) and 33(3) of the UNCITRAL Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration (“Model Law”) to correct or interpret the award or to issue an additional award, which would have the effect of extending the Timeframe to the date of receipt of the corrected or additional award, as the case may be. In DBX, the SICC considered for the first time the impact on the Timeframe of corrections made to an award by the tribunal on its own initiative under Article 33(2) of the Model Law. The SICC held that such unilateral corrections would not have the same effect of extending the Timeframe, in light of (among other things) the scheme of the Model Law. The setting-aside applications brought by the DBX applicants on the (wrong) assumption that the Timeframe had been extended following the tribunal’s Article 33(2) corrections were therefore time-barred and dismissed on that basis.
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