Oro Negro Drilling Pte. Ltd. and others v Integradora De Servicios Petroleros Oro Negro, S.A.P.I. De C.V. and others

The plaintiffs are six Singapore companies in the Oro Negro group: a holding company and five companies each owning an offshore drilling rig used in Mexico. Their constitutions barred insolvency proceedings without the vote of an independent director appointed by bond trustees. In September 2017 Mexican insolvency (concurso) petitions were filed for the plaintiffs without that vote. In Originating Summons No 126 of 2018 the High Court found that the third defendant, Mr Gonzalo Gil White, a former director, had caused those filings in breach of the implied contract and was liable in damages, and the Court of Appeal upheld that decision. The case moved to an assessment of damages.

The plaintiffs claimed, among other things, the fees of their Mexican lawyers, Sainz Abogados, and their US lawyers, Dechert LLP. On 23 October 2024 the court ordered them, in HC/ORC 1753/2025, to answer interrogatories breaking down the work done, the proceedings concerned, and the fees attributable to each. They did not appeal. Their answers in affidavits of January and March 2025 were said to be deficient, and by Summons No 1028 of 2025 Mr Gonzalo sought an unless order that their damages claim be struck out if they did not comply. Only in their reply affidavit did the plaintiffs disclose unredacted invoices.

1. Whether the plaintiffs had sufficiently answered the interrogatories ordered in ORC 1753.
2. Whether an unless order with dismissal of the damages claim as the consequence of default was warranted.
3. Whether the plaintiffs could resist the order by arguing that Mr Gonzalo already knew the proceedings or that a fee breakdown was impossible or commercially unfeasible.

The plaintiffs had adequately identified the Mexican proceedings and the work done there and when most invoices were paid, but they gave no answer at all on how each invoice's fees were split between proceedings. That part was fundamental, because without it the other answers were meaningless. For the US lawyers, the timetables listed court events but did not say what work, if any, Dechert did or whether it related to the plaintiffs' own concursos, and there was no fee breakdown. Even the unredacted invoices did not fill the gap.

Applying Mitora Pte Ltd v Agritrade International (Pte) Ltd [2013] 3 SLR 1179, an unless order is a last resort for inexcusable conduct. The breach was intentional: the plaintiffs had sought more time to give a comprehensive response, then knowingly filed deficient answers twice, even after being warned. Full answers were also essential to a fair assessment, since an originating summons has no pleadings and the defendant needed to know the case he had to meet.

The plaintiffs' first excuse, that Mr Gonzalo could work out the answers himself, had already been rejected when the interrogatories were ordered and was barred by issue estoppel. As to the second, the plaintiffs did not need contemporaneous time records; they had to commit to a position on what fees related to which proceedings. Because they claimed fees from other concursos as well, whether those were recoverable was a live issue and the breakdown was necessary. Any argument about how the work was in fact done should have been raised when the order was sought, so the extended doctrine of res judicata barred it as a collateral attack.

The Assistant Registrar allowed the application and granted the unless order, giving the plaintiffs 28 days, by agreement, to comply on pain of their claim for damages being struck out, and ordered them to pay costs of $9,500 (all in).