SELVAM LLC v AMLA PTE. LTD.

Facts

AMLA Pte Ltd accused Ms Vu Thi Mui of running a social media campaign against its business and sued her for defamation and malicious falsehood in DC/OC 116/2022; she counterclaimed for defamation. AMLA engaged the law firm Selvam LLC for that suit and for three related matters: Ms Vu's refund claim in the Small Claims Tribunal (SCT 12485/2022), her application for permission to appeal (SCTDJ 8026/2022), and her application for an expedited protection order (PHC 10157/2023). Selvam's bill of costs (DC/BCS 6/2024) included $185,395 for OC 116 alone.

The Deputy Registrar found the hours grossly disproportionate and taxed the professional fees down. On review, the District Judge in Selvam LLC v AMLA Pte Ltd [2025] SGDC 124 agreed the fees were excessive but assessed them at $96,000 inclusive of GST, before a consented deduction of $6,437.25. She ordered AMLA to pay the taxed-down Section 2 costs plus $250 in disbursements, disallowed Selvam's taxing and allocatur fee and Registrar's Certificate fee, and upheld the Section 3 disbursements. Both sides appealed: Selvam in HC/RAS 8/2025 and AMLA in HC/RAS 9/2025. AMLA was represented by its secretary.

Issues

1. Whether Selvam's appeal should be dismissed as an abuse of process
2. Whether Selvam had amended the statement of claim without AMLA's instructions, and whether Selvam was estopped by statements about its fees
3. Whether proportionality applies to solicitor-and-client costs where the client drove the litigation, and whether the District Judge's assessment of each matter was correct
4. Whether the District Judge erred on the Section 2 costs and the Section 3 disbursements

Holding

The High Court dismissed both appeals and upheld the District Judge's assessment of Section 1 costs at $96,000 inclusive of GST, her orders on Section 2 costs, and the Section 3 disbursements. Each party was to bear its own costs of the appeals.

Reasoning

AMLA's abuse of process complaints failed. Selvam had filed a draft order under O 17 r 3(5), not extracted an order unilaterally; refunding the taxed-off fees did not estop it from appealing, as an appeal is not a stay; and filing submissions two hours late caused no prejudice.

AMLA's representative, Mr Li, had affirmed an affidavit supporting the amendment, which replaced aggravated with exemplary damages, so it was made on AMLA's instructions. Selvam's later email about attaching a wrong version corrected an error and did not mislead. The trial had been vacated because Ms Vu was medically unfit, not because of the amendment. Selvam's general remark that successful parties usually recover about 60% of costs, and its qualified fee estimate, were not promises, so there was no estoppel.

The court accepted that, for solicitor-and-client costs, the damages awarded are a secondary factor, distinguishing Lin Jian Wei and another v Lim Eng Hock Peter [2011] 3 SLR 1052, which concerned party-and-party costs. But a client's insistence on the importance of a case does not give its lawyers unlimited latitude, and proportionality to all the circumstances still applies. The presumptions of reasonableness under O 21 r 23(2) had been rebutted. The District Judge assessed the actual work: the SCT claim concerned a simple question about a bunk bed, the permission application raised simple issues already familiar to counsel, and the protection order application ended at the first case conference. For OC 116, the hours billed equalled a lawyer working only on it for 10 weeks, for a simple claim with three days of trial; as the court put it, there were simply not many stones to turn. The inclusive GST figure was a practical approach.

On Section 2, s 128 of the Legal Profession Act did not apply because no assessment order was made on AMLA's application, so O 21 r 13 governed. AMLA's offers did not exceed the assessed sum, and the court retained discretion to disallow the fees. The challenged disbursements had no link to the amendment, and AMLA gave no evidence that the transcript cost was incurred at a different date.

From the judgment