The decision ofV.K. - Rebutting presumption: "The question [whether or not there is a binding contract] must depend on the Chwee Kin Keong decision - Chwee Kin Keong and Others v Digilandmall Pte Ltd [2004] 2 SLR 594; - Studocu Caso chwee kin keong and others digilandmall.com pte ltd slr sghc 71 suit no: suit decision 12 apr 2004 date: court: coram: counsel: high court rajah jc tan sok IgnorarExperimenta 'Pergunta a um Especialista' Pergunta a um especialista Added to his own purchases of 760 units, he was effectively responsible for the purchase of 1,090 laser printers. Media reports after the discovery of the mistake. After establishing from the web pages that the price quoted for the laser printer was indeed $66, he proceeded to make searches through search engines like Yahoo and visited the website of Hardware.com. Any reasonable person, given the extent of the knowledge and information the plaintiffs were armed with, would have come to a similar conclusion. Here are some examples of case citations for other jurisdictions. chwee kin keong and others digilandmall.com pte ltd sghc 71 case number suit decision date 12 april 2004 high court coram rajah jc counsel name(s) tan sok ling Skip to document Ask an Expert Sign inRegister Sign inRegister Home Ask an ExpertNew My Library Discovery Institutions Republic Polytechnic London School of Business and Finance Indeed, the time may have come for the common law to shed the pretence of searching for consideration to uphold commercial contracts. The complainants argued that they were not aware that this price was a mistake and wanted the binding contract to be fulfilled. 99 Like the somewhat arbitrary selection of the postal rule for ordinary mail, in the ultimate analysis, a default rule should be implemented for certainty, while accepting that such a rule should be applied flexibly to minimise unjustness. When notified and satisfied that this transaction was successful as well, he placed a final order at 4.21am for ten laser printers on the HP website, charging this to his credit card. This is one of the first prominent case that deals with the issue of web based contract. When the defendants discovered this mistake on their website, they sent an email to the complainants to say they would not be fulfilling this order. A steady stream of decisions from common law courts indicate a measured but nevertheless distinctly incremental willingness to extend the scope of the exception to not just actual knowledge, but deemed or constructive knowledge as well. Pages 74 Ratings 100% (5) 5 out of 5 people found this document helpful; The E-Mail Acceptance Rule. Furthermore, they relied on a passage from Singapore Civil Procedure 2003 (Sweet & Maxwell Asia, 2003) at para20/8/47 that asserts: At the trial leave to amend particulars will as a rule be refused (Moss v Malings (1886) 83ChD 603). The e-mail was given a high importance priority and captioned go load it now!!. In common mistake, both parties make the same mistake. 123 One view maintains that the mistaken party can either attempt to have the contract declared void at common law if the mistake is fundamental or radical, or alternatively seek a remedy in equity, which could include rescission. Where common mistake is pleaded, the presence of agreement is admitted. 67 MsToh subsequently did some research on how companies which had committed similar mistakes over the Internet handled the aftermath. 121 While my views here are not central to my decision, the plaintiffs have adverted to this relationship in a misguided attempt to derail the defence on an arid pleading technicality. Both parties expressed that they wished to effect amendments to mirror evidence that had been adduced in the proceedings. Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall.com (2005) - Singaporean case 3d printers sold for $66 instead of $3,800. The object of the exercise is to determine what each party intended, or must be deemed to have intended. Different protocols may result in messages arriving in an incomprehensible form. He somewhat muddied the authority of his observations by apparently accepting in Gallie v Lee [1969] 2 Ch 17 at 33 (affirmed on appeal in Saunders v Anglia Building Society [1971] AC 1004) that in Cundy v Lindsay there was no contract at all. 84 It is axiomatic that a court will generally be cautious if not reluctant to effect any amendments once the hearing has commenced; even more so once the evidential phase of the proceedings has been completed. There must be consensus ad idem. This is in contrast to the English position where after several decades, 125 The principal source of this view has been Lord DenningMR. (PDF) Unilateral Mistake in Contract: Five Degrees of - ResearchGate The only court judgement on the theme is Chwee Kin Keong v. Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd, a judgement of the Singapore High Court. Ltd} has the makings of a student's classic for several rea sons: it presents a textbook example of offer and acceptance; it is set in the context Do you have a 2:1 degree or higher? It takes the view that there is no jurisdiction in equity to rescind a contract that is valid at common law, on the basis of mistake. His credibility on the material points was dubious, at best. He also participates in multi-level marketing of Bel-Air aromatherapy products. If coherence is to be restored to this area of our law, it can only be by declaring that there is no jurisdiction to grant rescission of a contract on the ground of common mistake where that contract is valid and enforceable on ordinary principles of contract law. He appears to have been in constant communication with the second plaintiff and to have received and read the mass e-mail from the first plaintiff after he placed his first purchase order. Chwee Kin Keong v Digilandmall Pte Ltd The defendant, Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd, were an online IT company that sold related software and hardware from Singapore. The case of Chwee Kin Keong & Ors v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd [2004] SGHC 71, and the decision by VK Rajah JC, has received much public attention. He is also part of the Bel-Air network. Case law chwee kin keong v digilandmallcom pte ltd. School Nanyang Technological University; Course Title ACC 1301; Uploaded By saint_huimin. In that sense, it is akin to ordinary posting. CHWEE KIN KEONG and Others v DIGILANDMALL.COM Pte Ltd (2004) 2 SLR 594. When notified and satisfied that this transaction was successful as well, he placed a final order at 4.21am for ten laser printers on the HP website, charging this to his credit card. Case Note: Singapore | Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review The sender will usually receive a prompt response. As most web merchants have automated software responses, they need to ensure that such automated responses correctly reflect their intentions from an objective perspective. He offered to buy a laser printer from Desmond at double the price, that is $132. Inflexible and mechanical rules lead to injustice. Chwee Kin Keong decision - Chwee Kin Keong and Others v Digilandmall This view seems to suggest that principles of equity invariably provide an equally strong but more elastic second string to the bow. An FAQ guide to electronic contracts in Singapore - Lexology 24 While the first plaintiff conceded that he had communicated to the second and third plaintiffs the existence of a good deal, he maintained he did not discuss the possibility of the pricing being a mistake. Thus, while the idea of snapping up may well apply in cases one side is aware of the other sides error, I do not think it can be applied literally in the constructive knowledge cases. 41 The second plaintiff seems to have redefined the facts to achieve his objective in these proceedings. V K Rajah JC: Para continuar leyendo. They are not entitled to the costs of the subsequent brief hearing, for reasons I now deal with summarily. You may find the status of your order by calling us at (phone number given) Special instructions: Please call to advise delivery date and time. 53 He claimed that seeing the same price on the Digilandmall website confirmed his view that there had been no mistake. Scorpio: 13/01/20 01:46 hahahaha yeah lor .. aiyah why u only buy 3????? Most telling of all, I note that the first to fifth plaintiffs exhibited identical reports in each of their affidavits without any qualification whatsoever. One circumstance falling clearly within the equitable jurisdiction of the Court to relieve against mistake is that where one party, knowing of the others mistake as to the terms of an offer, remains silent and concludes a contract on the mistaken terms: It is not necessary to prove actual knowledge on the part of the non-mistaken party in order to ground relief, as, In summary therefore, the equitable jurisdiction of the Courts to relieve against mistake in contract comprehends situations where one party, who knows or ought to know of anothers mistake in a fundamental term, remains silent and snaps at the offer, seeking to take advantage of the others mistake. 30th Sep 2021 At the very least, it has been forcefully asserted that even when a mistake does not result in voiding a contract through the application of common law principles, there remains an independent doctrine of mistake founded in equity which justifies judicial intervention. Parties Chwee Kin Keong & Others v. Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd. Decision date 12/04/2004. He confirmed through these searches that the usual price of the laser printers was in the region of US$2,000. As such, I would strongly appeal to you to reconsider your decision. It is asserted that since mistake had not been pleaded as an equitable defence, equity cannot be invoked by the defendant. Ltd.1 has the makings of a student's classic for several reasons: it presents a textbook . The point is, there is a chasm between a clarification amendment and a new or distinct issue being raised at a later stage. Indeed this appears to be the underlying rationale for the unique legal characteristics attributed to an invitation to treat; see Grainger & Son v Gough [1896] AC 325 at 333334, Esso Petroleum Ltd v Commissioners of Customs & Excise [1976] 1All ER 117 at 126. In Canada, the latter suffices. Chwee Kin Keong and Others v Digilandmall.com Pte Ltd [2004] 2 SLR 594; [2004] SGHC 71 Suit No: Suit 202/2003/E Decision Date: 12 Apr 2004 Court: High Court Coram: V K Rajah JC Counsel: Tan Sok Ling, Malcolm Tan and Mohan Das Vijayaratnam (Tan S L and Partners) for plaintiffs, Philip Fong Yeng Fatt and Doris Chia Ming Lai (Harry Elias The court has to be astute and adopt a pragmatic and judicious stance in resolving such issues. (See for example the approach in, 142 The plaintiffs were bound by personal relationships as well as past and present common commercial interests. A prospective purchaser is entitled to rely on the terms of the web advertisement. Upon completing this sequence, each of the orders placed by the plaintiffs was confirmed by automated responses from the respective websites stating Successful Purchase Confirmation from HP online. . While commercial entities ought not to be given a licence to relax their vigilance, the policy considerations in refusing to enforce mistaken agreements militate against attaching undue weight to the carelessness involved in spawning the mistake. I was neither impressed nor convinced. 134 It is not really in issue that contracts can be effectively concluded over the Internet and that programmed computers sending out automated responses can bind the sender. The ETA is essentially permissive. This is a matter perhaps best left to law reform rather than to incremental judge-made law which may sow the seeds of confusion and harvest the returns of uncertainty. The fact that it may have been negligent is not a relevant factor in these proceedings. They assumed that to be the position. Cases of fraud and misrepresentation, and undue influence, are all catered for under other existing and uncontentious equitable rules. No modern authority was cited to me suggesting an intended commercial transaction of this nature could ever fail for want of consideration. The CISG has currently been adopted by 95 Contracting States world-wide. China-Singapore "One Belt One Road" International Business Cases Digest Part 1 -"" () 457-463 (2020, published by the Singapore and People's Republic of China Supreme Courts . Sometimes this is made explicit by judges; more often it is the implied basis of the courts decision. The purpose of the amendments was merely to regularise the pleadings and indeed they went no further than to summarise evidence and submissions that had already been raised. These considerations take precedence over the culpability associated with causing the mistake. He was aware that the laser printers were targeted for business use. Chwee Kin Keong vs Digilandmall.com - Free download as Powerpoint Presentation (.ppt / .pptx), PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or view presentation slides online. 42 Mark Yeow Kinn Keong has a Bachelor of Science (Economics) degree from the University of London. Their 54 The fourth plaintiff admits that he had entertained the idea at the material time that the price posting could have been an error. This could account for the substantial number of Canadian cases in this area of the law. 16 When the first plaintiff eventually succeeded in accessing the HP website, he immediately placed an order for 100 laser printers at about 2.05am, charging the transaction to his credit card. It appears to suggest that even if an offer is snapped up, the contract is not void. Desmond: 13/01/20 01:24 just ordered 3 colour lazer printer for S$66.00 each. This can result from human interphasing, machine error or a combination of such factors. Prior to this he was an associate in the Intellectual Property and Technology Department of Allen & Gledhill. This was summarily resolved. Yet in other aspects, he could recollect, with crystal clear precision and clarity, details of what had transpired. Having said that, this exception must always be prudently invoked and judiciously applied; the exiguous scope of this exception is necessary to give the commercial community confidence that commercial transactions will almost invariably be honoured when all the objective contractual indicia are satisfied.