Quay Chew Soon

On the judicial record

A commercial High Court judge whose reported corpus centres on banking and security-enforcement litigation, company disputes and interlocutory injunctions, with insurance and carriage claims among the mix.

Justice Quay Chew Soon sits in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and the reported decisions in this corpus are civil and commercial, with banking and finance litigation especially prominent. Summary-judgment applications under Order 14 of the Rules of Court recur in debt-recovery actions on financing facilities against borrowers and guarantors, where the question is whether the defendants have raised any triable issue to warrant a full trial. Related banking work includes applications for third-party discovery of banking records under Order 24 rule 7A and section 7 of the Bankers' Books (Evidence) Act 1949, and the enforcement of security, including the appointment of a receiver and manager over a mortgaged vessel following default.

Company and shareholder disputes feature, including a family-company dispute between brothers involving alleged breach of fiduciary duty, knowing receipt of confidential information and passing off, and an action alleging fraudulent trading. Interlocutory relief is a recurring theme: interlocutory mandatory injunctions, assessed by whether the applicant's case is unusually strong and clear and whether the balance of convenience favours preserving the status quo, and injunctions to restrain a defendant from dealing with assets pending satisfaction of a judgment debt.

The corpus also engages insurance and carriage disputes. One decision addresses an insurer's attempt to avoid a third-party motor policy renewed after the registered owner had died, raising the duty of utmost good faith and the question of insurable interest; another concerns a carrier's contractual and bailment duties for cargo damaged during a voyage in a typhoon. Appeals from the subordinate courts also come before the court, including appeals from the Sessions Court and Magistrate's Court on liability and quantum after trial. Civil-procedure questions recur in these appeals as well, including whether a lower court properly allowed an extension of time to file an affidavit in reply on an application to set aside a judgment in default. Together the judgments show a commercial High Court judge with a strong grounding in banking, security enforcement, company disputes and the interlocutory and appellate practice that surrounds them, deciding each matter by close reference to the governing rule of court or statute rather than at large.