Manmohan Singh Dhillon

On the court record

Manmohan Singh Dhillon appears in the corpus as a medical-negligence specialist, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), with matters running from questions of parties and procedure through to the assessment of damages. One High Court matter, appearing for the plaintiff, arose from a claim against a medical centre and a doctor and concerned an application to intervene and add a co-plaintiff: the applicant was a joint administrator of the deceased's estate who wished to be represented by his own solicitors, an application the existing plaintiff opposed on the ground of possible inconsistent and conflicting interests; the court allowed the application, holding that the proposed intervener had a right to be the second plaintiff and that both sets of solicitors should collaborate as a team. A Court of Appeal matter, appearing for the respondent, concerned the assessment of damages in a fatal medical-negligence case — damages for the pain and suffering of a patient who had suffered for a period before death, the absence of proof of loss of dependency, and the difficult question of whether an estate can sue for aggravated damages and how events occurring after the death of the deceased are treated. A third matter, in the High Court and appearing for the plaintiff, was a quantum assessment in a medical-negligence claim, turning on the injured person's entitlement to compensation for private healthcare treatment and rehabilitation and on the medical categorisation relevant to estimating life expectancy — whether the claimant fell into a 'tube-fed' or a 'fed-by-others' category — with general and special damages assessed accordingly. Across the appearances the practice is concentrated on clinical negligence and its consequences, from the constitution of the claim and the representation of estates to the heads and measure of damages recoverable for catastrophic and fatal injury.