Pierre Andre Jacques Lorinet v Helu-Trans (S) Pte Ltd

Lorinet, Pierre Andre Jacques v Helu-Trans (S) Pte Ltd was a trial in Originating Claim No 269 of 2022 in the General Division of the High Court, brought in Mr Lorinet's name by his subrogated insurers. Mr Lorinet bought Sir Anish Kapoor's sculpture "Untitled (Red Apple)", an egg-shaped bowl weighing approximately 22.8 kg, on 30 May 2012 for £522,000.

When he moved home in 2014 he engaged the movers Helu-Trans, on a quotation that incorporated its Uniform Trading Conditions, to uninstall, transport and reinstall his artworks. No installation instructions were sought or given. On 7 May 2014 its workers mounted the sculpture on a living room wall using a 5 cm-long screw with washers in a rawl plug. Mr Lorinet said it fell on 18 September 2016 while he was overseas, his wife having found it on the floor after hearing a loud noise. The insurers' loss adjusters attributed the fall to the screw fixation. The insurers paid out, had the sculpture restored at the cost of £81,850.04 and sold it at auction for £180,000.

The action, filed on 16 September 2022, alleged that the screw was too small to bear the sculpture's weight over time, in breach of duties in contract and tort. Helu-Trans pleaded limitation against the contract claim, relied on exclusion and limitation clauses, said no separate tort duty arose, and maintained the installation was proper.

1. Whether the claims in contract and in tort were time-barred
2. Whether Helu-Trans owed a duty of care in tort alongside its contractual duty
3. Whether the exclusion and limitation clauses in the Conditions applied
4. Whether Helu-Trans breached its duty and caused the sculpture's fall

A contract claim accrues on breach, here the installation on 7 May 2014, so the six-year period under s 24A(3)(a) of the Limitation Act 1959 had long expired, and the postponed period gave no help because the loss adjusters' first report of 15 October 2016 supplied the required knowledge. A negligence claim accrues when damage occurs. The court accepted the contemporaneous emails that the sculpture fell on 18 September 2016, so the tort claim was brought two days before time ran out.

Helu-Trans conceded foreseeability and proximity under Spandeck Engineering (S) Pte Ltd v Defence Science & Technology Agency [2007] 4 SLR(R) 100. The court respectfully departed from the reasoning in [2023] SGHC 264 that a tort duty coterminous with a contractual duty is for that reason alone superimposed. Relying on Go Dante Yap v Bank Austria Creditanstalt AG [2011] 4 SLR 559, it held that the policy concern is with upsetting the parties' agreed allocation of risk.

There was no such upset because none of the clauses would have protected Helu-Trans. Read in context, the custody-and-control and seven-day notice clauses dealt with loss or damage while services were being performed or in transit, not later. The weight-based cap, worth $22.80 for a six-figure artwork, would have failed the reasonableness test under the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977.

On breach, the fact of the fall proved nothing by itself, and the lack of pre-installation checks was beside the point. The experts agreed the wall material failed, not the screw or sculpture, yet there was no evidence of the wall's composition or the hole size. The defendant's own tests, unwitnessed by Mr Lorinet, were given little weight. The adequacy of the mounting could not be determined. On causation, the wife's account was inadmissible hearsay, res ipsa loquitur failed because Helu-Trans was not in control more than two years after installation, and the forensic evidence was inconclusive.

The court dismissed Mr Lorinet's claims. The contract claim was time-barred; the tort claim was in time and a duty of care was owed, but breach was not proved and, even assuming breach, causation was not shown. The court did not decide quantum or mitigation and would hear counsel on costs.