INTERTEK TESTING SERVICES (SINGAPORE) PTE LTD v HAIDIR BIN MOHAMAD KHIR

Facts

Intertek Testing Services (Singapore) Pte Ltd, a petroleum testing and cargo inspection company, employed Mr Haidir bin Mohamad Khir as an Operations Manager from 2 January 2020. His employment was terminated on 24 April 2021, and he joined Saybolt (Singapore) Pte Ltd. Clauses 11.2.1 and 11.2.2 of his employment agreement barred him, for six months after his employment ended, from providing relevant services to or soliciting business from relevant persons. Intertek sued in Suit No 616 of 2021, filing its writ on 16 July 2021. It alleged that he breached those clauses by offering or providing services to five named customers, and that its gasoline blending team suffered a sharp decline in business. He denied the breaches and pleaded that Intertek was not entitled to the reliefs sought.

Both sides sought specific discovery. An Assistant Registrar refused Mr Haidir's request for Intertek's documents on the costs of providing the relevant services, and granted Intertek's request for his correspondence with the customers dated after the writ. Mr Haidir appealed both rulings in Registrar's Appeals Nos 182 and 183 of 2023.

Issues

1. Whether Intertek's cost documents were relevant to the pleaded issues, given how its damages should be measured.
2. Whether the scope of the cost documents sought was too broad.
3. Whether correspondence showing alleged breaches after the date of the writ was relevant to the suit.

Holding

Goh Yihan J allowed RA 182 in part and RA 183 in full. He ordered disclosure of Intertek's documents evincing costs of providing the relevant services from February 2021 to 23 October 2021, but upheld the refusal of the category on differences in costs. He held that Intertek was not entitled to Mr Haidir's correspondence dated after 16 July 2021. Costs were left for agreement or written submissions.

Reasoning

Specific discovery requires relevance to the pleaded case and necessity for fairly disposing of the matter or saving costs.

On RA 182, the judge framed the real question as whether Intertek's claim could be assessed only on lost profit. Its pleaded complaint was an inability to provide services at previous levels, and providing services necessarily involves operating expenses. Measuring loss by revenue alone would compensate Intertek for expenses it would have incurred anyway, amounting to double recovery. Damages could therefore be claimed only on a profit basis, which made its costs relevant. Mr Haidir's averment that Intertek was not entitled to the reliefs sought sufficed to put this in issue. The category on cost differences was not shown to be relevant, as the start date had no connection to the material dates and the first category would already let costs be calculated. Confidentiality concerns could be met by redaction.

On RA 183, a party cannot sue on a cause of action that did not exist when the writ was filed. Drawing on Larking v Great Western (Nepean) Gravel Ltd (1940) 64 CLR 221, the judge distinguished a once-and-for-all breach from successive breaches, each of which gives rise to a fresh cause of action. Each alleged approach to a relevant person would breach cl 11 afresh, so any post-writ dealings were new causes of action that had to be brought in a separate action. In any event, Intertek's pleadings did not make clear that all causes of action had accrued before the writ, and that could not be implied from the filing date.

From the judgment