KOAY KIM HOE (menuntut sebagai nominee SOMPO INSURANCE SINGAPORE PTE LTD dan untuk diri sendiri) v WONG CHENG NUN (Passport No. F8357492P, seorang warganegara Malaysia yang beralamat di Malaysia)

Case Significance

Applies forum non conveniens to dismiss a Singaporean plaintiff's Malaysian action over a Singapore road accident, holding that Singapore — where the accident and evidence lay — was the natural and appropriate forum.

This High Court decision at Johor Bahru concerns the jurisdiction of the Malaysian courts and the doctrine of forum non conveniens, where a Singaporean plaintiff sued a Malaysian defendant in Malaysia over a road accident that had occurred in Singapore. The plaintiff — suing both as nominee for a Singapore insurer and for himself — claimed damages arising from a road traffic accident on the Pan Island Expressway in Singapore in April 2020, the plaintiff's Singapore-registered vehicle having been insured by that insurer. The individual parties are referred to here by role. The material facts were largely undisputed; the dispute turned on whether the Malaysian court was the appropriate forum to hear and determine the claim.

The court approached the matter through the settled forum non conveniens analysis: the question was whether Malaysia was the natural or appropriate forum, and, if another forum was clearly more appropriate, whether the plaintiff had shown any reason why justice nonetheless required the claim to proceed in Malaysia. The connecting factors pointed firmly to Singapore. The accident occurred there, the events and evidence were located there, and the Singapore court was in a position to secure the attendance of the relevant witnesses. On that basis the court ruled that the plaintiff had failed to demonstrate why the Singapore courts were an inappropriate forum, and held that the Malaysian court was not the natural or appropriate forum for the determination of the claim.

Having failed on the threshold issues of jurisdiction and forum, the plaintiff's claim could not proceed to a determination on the merits; the court noted that, absent that foundation, the substantive entitlement to relief did not arise for decision. The court dismissed the claim without costs. The judgment is a useful illustration of how the forum non conveniens doctrine resolves a cross-border motor-accident claim in favour of the jurisdiction where the accident and its evidence are located.