[2013] SGHC 135 - Singapore Law Watch

Law Society of Singapore v Kurubalan s/o Manickam Rengaraju [2013] SGHC 135
Champerty has little in common with the offence of overcharging except in so
far as both arise out of or concern arrangements having to do with a solicitor’s
remuneration.
Mitigating factors
54 A number of mitigating factors were raised that might conduce to
leniency. Those that weighed on the Inquiry Committee have been noted (at
[21] above).
55 However, in our judgment, these were not relevant mitigating
circumstances. While it is true that the Complainant obtained a substantial
payout that far exceeded her initial expectation which was in the region of
A$300,000, it was not evident how any inspiration on the Respondent’s part
contributed to this result. The essence of the Respondent’s assistance consisted
of his having enabled the Complainant to kick-start the process of pursuing her
claim in Australia and in that sense actually to access justice. Once the process
was begun, the bulk of the legal work was in fact carried out by Creevey
Russell. In this regard, we accepted that the Complainant’s medical bills were
substantial and without the Respondent’s help it was unlikely that she could
have afforded to seek and eventually to find a suitable set of lawyers willing to
act on a speculative fee basis to bring the claim in Australia. This was a
particular concern in this case as it was feared that her claim might be timebarred
and this rendered her prospects of success much less certain. But as
against this, it may be noted that this may be said to be true to some degree in
almost all champertous cases. Given the existing prohibition on such
arrangements, this can have only limited weight in the balancing of factors
that go to sentencing. Moreover, it was not the case that the Respondent was
motivated exclusively, or even substantially, by the purely altruistic concern of
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