GRACE CHIA JUNE THEO (XIE YUNZHEN) MRS GRACE DONEY & 3 Ors v SELVAKUMAR RANJAN & Anor

Facts

On 11 November 2019 Mark Anthony Kirk Doney, a 55-year-old Australian freelance visual effects artist living in Singapore, was cycling along Nicoll Drive when he was hit by a truck driven by the first defendant, an employee of the second defendant, NTT Transport Pte Ltd. He died on 14 November 2019. His widow and their three children sued as his dependants in Suit No 786 of 2021. In Chia June Theo Grace (alias Xie Yunzhen) Mrs Grace Doney v Selvakumar Ranjan [2023] SGHC 117 the court found the driver wholly liable and the company vicariously liable, and the appeal was dismissed on 6 February 2024.

This judgment assesses damages. The plaintiffs sought more than S$4 million; the defendants argued for around S$700,000–S$800,000. Agreed items, including S$15,000 for bereavement and special damages, came to S$34,703.57. Mr Doney died without a will, and his estate, mostly in Australia, passed on intestacy, so his four adult children from earlier marriages shared in it. His Australian property was sold by one of them as administratrix for A$900,000. The disputed heads were loss of dependency, loss of inheritance (including a claim that he would have left everything to the plaintiffs), loss of use and appreciation of the Australian property, mortgage payments and Australian legal fees, and deprivation of family benefits. Much of the dispute was between the two sides' experts.

Issues

1. Whether the deceased's income should be reduced for business expenses of more than 50%, and whether it would have grown faster than inflation.
2. How the actuarial multipliers in the PIRC Tables should be applied to the dependency and inheritance claims, including whether a notional age of death should be fixed.
3. Whether the plaintiffs could claim a larger inheritance on the basis that he would have made a will in their exclusive favour.
4. Whether the losses linked to the Australian property, the Australian legal fees and lost family benefits were recoverable.

Holding

The court allowed the claim in part, awarding S$1,908,431.80 and A$87,498.79 in total. This comprised the agreed items, S$1,794,020.73 for loss of dependency, S$79,707.43 for loss of inheritance and A$87,498.79 for Australian administration legal fees. The will-based claim, the Australian property claims, the mortgage payments, the Family Provision legal fees and the claim for family benefits were disallowed. Interest and costs were to be heard separately.

Reasoning

On income, the court accepted the plaintiffs' expert's figures drawn from bank and payment records, which were significantly more than the sums declared to IRAS. It rejected the defendants' view that the gap reflected expenses of more than 50% for what was a home-based, software-heavy business, and adopted operating expenses of 6%. It made no finding on whether income had been under-declared. Because income fluctuated sharply, the court held it would only have kept pace with inflation, which the tables already build in.

On the multipliers, the court held that the main PIRC Tables already allow for mortality, so fixing a notional age of death with them would discount twice. But because the dependency and inheritance claims were linked, it fixed a notional death age of 85 and a retirement age of 75 for both, and used Table 3, which discounts only for early receipt. For inheritance it applied a single multiplier of 0.39 to savings accumulated to age 85, compound interest only on CPF savings, following Zhu Xiu Chun (alias Myint Myint Kyi) v Rockwills Trustee Ltd [2016] 5 SLR 412, and a 13/21 intestacy share.

The will claim failed even assuming it was possible in law. There was no draft will or legal advice, his wishes over decades were uncertain, and he might have provided for his adult children, so the expectation was too speculative, as in Davies v Taylor [1974] AC 207.

The Australian property losses did not result from the death: the widow missed an opportunity to occupy the property, the administratrix independently chose to sell, and the widow missed the deadline to match the buyer's offer, a failure to mitigate. Mortgage payments were voluntary, and the Family Provision fees could not be mitigation of a loss that did not exist. Probate fees were allowed in proportion to the plaintiffs' intestacy share. The court treated lost family benefits as covered by the bereavement award.

From the judgment