Public Prosecutor v Yeo Teck Soon

Mr Yeo Teck Soon was the director of Formwork Hire (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd, which supplied parts for formworks. In March 2016 the company delivered formwork materials on 33 occasions to a worksite at 47 Jalan Buroh. On 2 April 2016 a section of a table formwork structure supporting a rampway slab collapsed, injuring one worker. Investigations found defects in the collapsed formwork, including severe corrosion on scaffold frames that had been painted over, which an investigative report said had severely reduced its load bearing capacity.

The company was charged under s 16(1)(b) read with s 20 of the Workplace Safety and Health Act (WSHA) for failing, so far as reasonably practicable, to ensure the equipment it supplied was safe, and Mr Yeo faced a similar charge read with s 48(1), which makes officers secondarily liable for their company's offence. Both claimed trial and were convicted. The District Judge found that the formwork had been built only from the company's materials, that the defects existed on delivery, and that the company's checking procedure had not been followed by its workers. The company was fined $280,000. Mr Yeo's culpability was assessed as low, since the crux of his offence was negligence, and he was fined $150,000. The Prosecution appealed against his sentence in Magistrate's Appeal No 9202 of 2024/01, heard by a three-judge panel of the General Division of the High Court with the help of a young independent counsel.

1. Whether the two-stage sentencing framework applies to an officer's offence under s 16(1)(b) read with ss 20 and 48(1) of the WSHA, and which benchmarks apply.
2. What factors are relevant to an officer's culpability, and whether the company's culpability factors may be considered.
3. Whether the District Judge erred in assessing Mr Yeo's culpability as low.

On the framework, the court reasoned that the general duties in Part IV of the WSHA punishable under s 50 are similarly formulated around reasonably practicable measures, and Parliament intended sentences to reflect culpability, potential harm and actual harm without prioritising any one. Section 48(1) shares the purpose of making management accountable for safety, so the approach in Public Prosecutor v Manta Equipment (S) Pte Ltd [2023] 3 SLR 327 and Koh Lian Kok applies. Because s 50 distinguishes corporate and individual offenders, the Koh Lian Kok benchmarks, built for natural persons under s 50(a), are the right ones. Harm is pegged to the harm arising from the company's offence.

On culpability, the court accepted factors drawn from Singapore, English and Australian authorities: the officer's role and decision-making power on safety, the extent of participation (mental state, prior warnings, concealment, efforts to learn what was required, involvement), duration, and any financial motive. It rejected Mr Yeo's argument that his role could not count again at sentencing, because role sets the standard of care for liability but measures the severity of the breach at sentencing. The company's culpability factors may be used where there is a direct nexus between the officer's conduct and the company's breach, such as where he is its alter ego or consented to or connived at the offence; even without one, egregious breaches may support an inference of awareness. The officer's culpability is assessed independently and is not automatically the company's.

On the appeal itself, the court found no evidence that Mr Yeo had fostered a culture of blind trust: read in context, his testimony was that staff were trusted but still had to follow procedures. The claim that he knew painting between two visual checks made the system ineffective was speculative, and the point about the system's ineffectiveness had never been put to him; the Prosecution's trial theory, that defects were deliberately painted over, had been rejected. The allegation of inadequate training was likewise never put to him, was not in the petition of appeal, and was not supported by evidence of what adequate training required, so the rule in Browne v Dunn (1893) 6 R 67 and s 378(6) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010 barred it.

The court dismissed the Prosecution's appeal and left the $150,000 fine undisturbed. It held that the two-stage framework applies, using the benchmarks in Koh Lian Kok v Public Prosecutor [2024] 4 SLR 1526, and that there was no basis to disturb the finding that Mr Yeo's culpability was low, as the Prosecution's arguments were either unsupported by the evidence or had never been put to him at trial.