Eddie Tan Tung Wee v Singapore Health Services Pte Ltd

Dr Eddie Tan Tung Wee was employed by Singapore Health Services Pte Ltd and worked at the National Neuroscience Institute, becoming a Consultant Neurosurgeon from 1 November 2020 under a contract dated 19 October 2020 that incorporated the employer's Committee of Inquiry (COI) Policy and Discipline Policy.

From 2020 he raised complaints about a colleague, Dr Chen, including allegations of a conspiracy in the neurosurgery department; an independent committee found no professional misconduct. After a patient died following surgery by Dr Chen and Dr Kirollos in June 2021, he emailed allegations of gross negligence and recklessness, and a second committee was appointed. A whistleblower report alleged that he and others had been trying to find fault with the two doctors. The second committee found he had accessed the patient's operative notes and recommended an inquiry into his own conduct.

That inquiry, convened on 6 October 2021, heard his written response and interviewed him. He admitted a pattern of unauthorised access to records of patients not under his care, and the access logs showed 42 patients on 65 occasions. The inquiry recommended a Record of Warning. Because data breaches had to go to the SingHealth Disciplinary Council, the council considered the case on 24 January 2022 and 7 March 2022. At the second meeting it also considered an audit of his access to NNI and ENT patient records, which he was not shown or invited to answer, and recommended dismissal. He was dismissed by letter dated 14 March 2022 and sued for wrongful dismissal and negligence in HC/OC 361/2023. The High Court dismissed the claims, and he brought Civil Appeal No 7 of 2025.

1. Whether the appellant's pleadings were wide enough for him to argue on appeal that a further committee of inquiry had to be convened.
2. Whether the employer was contractually required to convene another committee of inquiry into the audit findings or give the appellant the audit results and a chance to respond.

On pleadings, the court held that his pleading relied on para 2.2 of the COI Policy, which links the due process obligation to the convening of a committee. The argument turned only on contractual interpretation, needed no further evidence and caused the employer no prejudice, so he could run it.

On the main issue, the court applied Leiman, Ricardo and another v Noble Resources Ltd and another [2020] 2 SLR 386: a body deciding rights under a contract has no general duty of natural justice unless the contract imposes one. Under the contract and policies, unauthorised access to patient data was a ground for dismissal and a data breach was gross misconduct. A committee of inquiry investigates and finds facts, while the disciplinary council only reviews the committee's recommendation on sanction and has no investigative role. The due process right in para 2.2 applies within the disciplinary proceedings, whose scope is set by the misconduct the committee was convened to investigate. Here that was the admitted breaches, and he accepted that the inquiry had given him due process and that he could not complain if he had been dismissed on those breaches alone. There was thus no obligation to convene another committee or to share the audit, and his alternative argument fell away.

The court expressly left open whether the council could properly consider facts not found by the committee, since he had never argued that it acted beyond its remit. It also found the employer's arguments about why the audit was used, and about his not challenging the audit at trial, unhelpful to the question in the appeal.

The Appellate Division dismissed the appeal with costs to the respondent fixed at $30,000 (all in), with the usual consequential orders. It held that no term of the employment contract or the incorporated policies required the employer to let the appellant respond to the audit results before dismissing him.