TEY SONG KIEM MRS GOH CHEOW MIANG v MOHD JAFFAR BIN ISMAIL practising as FFUSION ARCHITECTS (Singapore UEN No. XXXXXXXXM) & Anor

Facts

The claimant, Mdm Tey Song Kiem, lives with her husband Mr Goh at 2 Jalan Azam, a house that was reconstructed between 21 Mar 2018 and 20 Feb 2019. Mr Goh appointed the 1st defendant, Mohd Jaffar Bin Ismail practising as Ffusion Architects, as architect, and the 2nd defendant, Wne One Enterprise LLP, as contractor. On 12 March 2020 the motor of the automated sliding gate failed at night. After raising the motor's mechanical lever, as the automation vendor Kerry Security had advised on earlier failures, the claimant, her husband and their son tried to close the gate by hand. Within three minutes the gate slid past a 1.5 cm stopper on the guide rail, left its safety bracket and fell on her, fracturing both legs.

In District Court Originating Claim No 174 of 2023 she sued both defendants in negligence. The architect denied owing her a duty for the gate's operation, testing or installation. The contractor said a separate entity, WNE 2 Pte Ltd, had been engaged for the gate, and both defendants said the family's own conduct caused the accident or contributed to it.

Issues

1. Whether the architect owed the claimant a duty of care for the gate's operational design and the supervision of its testing and installation.
2. Whether the 2nd defendant was the party that built the gate and breached a duty of care to the claimant.
3. Whether the family's manual handling of the gate broke the chain of causation or made the claimant contributorily negligent.
4. Whether and to what extent damages, including pre-trial loss of earnings during the Covid-19 period, should be awarded.

Holding

The court allowed the claim against the 2nd defendant and dismissed the claim against the 1st defendant, so the claim succeeded in part. The 2nd defendant was ordered to pay $134,261.80 with interest at 5.33% per annum from the date of the originating claim to judgment, with written costs submissions to follow.

Reasoning

Applying the two-stage test in Spandeck Engineering (S) Pte Ltd v Defence Science & Technology Agency [2007] 4 SLR(R) 100 and following RSP Architects, the court found the architect did owe the claimant a general duty of care: as the spouse living in the house, she was someone he knew would benefit from his work, and no policy reason told against the duty. But his engagement covered the aesthetic design intent only. He did not design the rail, stoppers, bracket or mechanism, and supervising the gate's installation was outside his scope of work. His duty of reasonable supervision did not extend to it, and there was no evidence he failed to give reasonable supervision.

The court rejected the contractor's attempt to point to WNE 2. The claim was in tort, so the question was who actually built the gate, not who invoiced it. The contractor's site coordinator supervised the installation, its workers built the gate and later reinstalled it with new stoppers, and there was no evidence WNE 2 had any employees. Mr Lau, who controlled both entities, accepted they were used interchangeably. The contractor owed the claimant a duty of care. Its own expert said the gate would topple once more than 69 kgf was applied, which the court found two or three people operating the gate by hand could readily exceed; the 1.5 cm stopper was therefore inadequate, and the duty was breached.

There was no evidence the family used excessive force, and the CCTV footage showed none. They followed the vendor's instructions, which had worked before, and manual operation of an automated gate was to be expected. Their conduct was reasonable, not reckless, so it did not break the chain of causation, and the claimant was not contributorily negligent.

On damages, the court placed both fractures in the Guidelines band for moderate injuries, awarding $25,000 and $17,000, plus $7,000 for scars, $1,200 for a laceration, $689 medical expenses and $340 transport. Future medical expenses were refused for lack of evidence. The claimant's three-year average daily income of $954.40 was accepted over the contractor's objections, and the contractor bore the burden of proving its Covid-19 arguments, which it did not. But because she could not have worked in person during the circuit breaker anyway, those 55 days were excluded, leaving 87 days and $83,032.80 for pre-trial loss of earnings.

From the judgment