Talk:Oakwell Engineering Ltd v Enernorth Industries Inc

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Biased statement?[edit]

Is there a source for this statement: "If Enernorth's appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal had succeeded, a precedent would have been set for regarding judgments by Singaporean courts as unenforceable outside Singapore. This might have had the effect of dissuading companies from using Singaporean law for arbitration and trial, and calling into question the fairness of the Singaporean legal system."?
Now that both appeals are dismissed, does it now imply that (1) judgments by Singaporean courts are now respected outside Singapore, and (2) the fairness of the Singaporean legal system is acknowledged?
Since the article presents the hypothetical "negative" outcome, then it should also present the "positive" outcome for NPOV. Alternatively, the speculative statement should be removed, especially since the premise is now false. Any comment?
Overall, the article is currently biased towards the Enernorth's case.

--Vsion 02:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think the statement that you quoted was the opinion of the editor who created the article. While I do agree that the article has a bias towards Enernorth's submissions, I suppose the Enernorth case is notable because if Enernorth had succeeded it would have meant that a foreign court had cast doubt on the integrity of the Singapore legal system. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to remove that statement entirely, otherwise it is not clear why the case is notable. Perhaps the statement can be rephrased. Not having yet read the Supreme Court of Canada's decision dismissing Enernorth's appeals (a future project, perhaps?), I don't know what the Court said about the fairness of the Singapore legal system. I doubt that the Court mentioned the matter directly, otherwise the newspaper reports would have said something about that. Cheers, Jacklee 13:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

As a start, I would dispute the wordings of the paragraph, specifically (1) "If Enernorth's appeal ... had succeeded, a precedent [legal precedent???] would have been set for regarding judgments by Singaporean courts as unenforceable outside Singapore", and (2) "might have had the effect of dissuading companies from using Singaporean law for arbitration and trial, and calling into question the fairness of the Singaporean legal system". Unless attribution and sources of these opinions are provided, these potentially violates WP:NOR. I question whether Enernorth's case had such potential effect. Rather it raises issues (among others) about (1) whether Singapore legal system satisfies "canadian legal standards" (needs to be defined), (2) "separation of power" (the concept is different with different legal systems). The Ontario Court of Appeal does support the Superior Court's findings that "there was a lack of evidence of corruption or bias ...". --Vsion 14:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The second statement is directly attributable to Michael Backman (a well-known commentator on all things Singaporean) as quoted in the IHT article, and is now cited as such. The first bit about the legal precedent, though, seems kinda obvious: if the court had accepted Enernorth's argument and found in their favor, a legal precedent would have been set. Jpatokal 17:12, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is better now. The IHT article provides additional information that can be added to make the article more balanced, such as the canadian courts' findings. Regarding "precedent", it works either way depending if the judge rules in favour or against Enernorth. Also judges are often careful to make specific findings rather than a general ruling. I suggest we use a more neutral sentence like: "the court's decision might set a precedent regarding whether judgments by Singaporean courts is enforceable in Canada (or commonweath?). --Vsion 18:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, precedent just means that in this case (for the first time) a court has agreed with the logic presented by the defense, which in Enernorth's case was "Singaporean courts are corrupt, and thus their judgments cannot be trusted". How this is taken into account by other courts in Canada, in the Commonwealth or anywhere else is discussed in detail in precedent. Jpatokal 12:20, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Precedent is based on the court's judgement, not on the plaintiff 's case or argument. The problem with the original sentence is that it speculates what kind of precedent it would set without seeing the language of the hypothetical court judgement. Even if the court ruled in favor of Enernorth, it would not mean that precedent is set for "judgments by Singaporean courts as unenforceable outside Singapore". This is just too far-fetch; hard to believe any canadian judge would make such a general judgement. In fact, from my limited understanding on law, precedents usually describe what are the legal principles, what types of argument are valid, and under what conditions, so that the same principles can be applied in lower courts' decisions. It is not for making such a sweeping declaration. My suggested sentence is better, that it would set a precedent "regarding whether judgments by Singaporean courts is enforceable in Canada"; it does not speculate what precedent that would be, which can only be known after such a ruling is written and analyzed. --Vsion 04:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that when the editor wrote that "a precedent would have been set", he or she did have in mind the possibility that if one foreign court had come to a certain conclusion, other foreign courts might follow suit. The courts of a particular country are not bound to apply the reasonings of judgments from foreign courts, but nonetheless such judgments may be persuasive. Cheers, Jacklee 13:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Category:Judicial branch of the Singapore Government"[edit]

Hi, I removed "Category:Singaporean law" from the article and replaced it with "Category:Judicial branch of the Singapore Government" because I feel "Singaporean law" is inappropriate. The article is about a Canadian case, so it is not about Singaporean law at all. On the other hand, the case alleged bias on the part of Singapore courts, so "Judicial branch of the Singapore Government" is relevant. — SMUconlaw (talk) 12:10, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite: the original case was tried in Singapore. Jpatokal (talk) 12:24, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Even so, the current article is only about the Canadian case. — SMUconlaw (talk) 13:09, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Nope: Oakwell_Engineering_v._Enernorth_Industries#Court_cases_in_Singapore Jpatokal (talk) 21:52, 25 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

What about a compromise: we have both "Singaporean law" (though the article is really more about the Canadian case law) and "Judicial branch of the Singapore Government" (since the cases alleged bias by Singapore courts)? — SMUconlaw (talk) 05:14, 26 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]