DKB v DKC

Facts

DKB, the claimant, had obtained leave to enforce an arbitral award against DKC, the defendant, in Singapore. In HC/SUM 1133/2024, filed in Originating Application No 10 of 2024 before the Singapore International Commercial Court, the defendant sought to set aside the order granting that leave.

The defendant's main ground was public policy. It said that a Mr [H] is subject to US sanctions, that the claimant is allegedly owned and controlled by him and so caught by those sanctions, and that letting the claimant enforce the award in Singapore would put the defendant in breach of them.

At a case management hearing on 15 September 2025 the judge raised whether the case could be shortened by framing separate questions that would avoid a factual inquiry into whether Mr [H] owned and controlled the claimant. Counsel for the claimant proposed three questions. They asked, on an assumption made without admission that the claimant was subject to sanctions, whether enforcement would offend Singapore public policy under s 31(4)(b) of the International Arbitration Act 1994 if it would not breach those sanctions, whether s 29 of that Act allowed judgment in Singapore dollars on a US dollar award, and whether the defendant could pay in US dollars without breaching US sanctions. The defendant opposed the proposal.

Issues

1. Whether the court should order the claimant's proposed separate questions to be determined before any factual inquiry
2. Whether questions resting on assumed rather than found or admitted facts were suitable for separate determination
3. Whether answering the questions would finally determine the proceedings

Holding

The court refused to order the separate questions proposed by the claimant. As the judge had indicated at the case management conference of 14 October 2025, the orders requested were not made, so the setting-aside application would proceed without the shortcut.

Reasoning

The main difficulty was that the questions would be answered on assumptions, not on facts the court had found or the parties had admitted. Although the questions were not purely hypothetical, the judge considered it generally very undesirable to decide proceedings on an assumed state of facts, especially where the facts were uncertain and the legal questions carried some novelty.

The defendant had argued that issues would remain outstanding even if the claimant won on every question. The judge accepted that some of those matters might in fact be resolved by the answers, but the doubt over whether favourable answers would end the litigation was a further strong reason to decline.

From the judgment