Tag Archives: Legal News

Avoid multiple-client cases, lawyers told

A COURT of Three Judges has expressed concern about lawyers representing multiple clients in the same case after one lawyer was suspended for a year for professional misconduct.

In issuing its guidelines last week, the court – comprising Justices Chao Hick Tin, Andrew Phang and V.K. Rajah – advised lawyers to avoid getting themselves into such situations.

Mr S. Uthayasurian had acted for six parties involved in a property development project in Tanglin Hill.

The transaction involved an investor who was talked into developing a property owned by the Brunei government.

The man who proposed the project and disbursed the funds, Mr Louis Ang, was an undischarged bankrupt. Continue reading

Cheated of property and $1.2m

CHEATED of their property when their lawyer forged their signatures to seize ownership, three brothers had to come up with another $700,000 to prevent the bank from selling off the building.

Yesterday, their five-year-long plight finally ended when the High Court ordered the rogue lawyer’s name to be removed from the property title deed and replaced by their names instead.

The brothers, Mr Sim Chiang Lee, Mr Sim Sien Tong and Mr Sim Ah Ban, now in their 50s and 60s, were partners and shareholders in a family business that included provisions, hardware and realty.

Their ordeal began in March 2004 when then lawyer Sivakolunthu Thirunavukarasu, now 51, forged their signatures and transferred ownership of a factory they had purchased to her name. Continue reading