The following is an edited transcript of a filmed interview I did with Professor Lee Sheridan on 29 December 2014 at his home in Cardiff, Wales. I first met Sheridan back in 1985 when I was a law student at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. At the time, I worked through the Law Club to launch a series of lunch-time lectures and talks and through the good offices of Professor Tommy Koh, was able to invite Sheridan to deliver one of these talks. Over the years, I have had many correspondences and interviews with Sheridan. As a result, parts of this particular interview sound like half-finished conversations from an earlier time. I decided to leave them be, rather than edit them out as it gives the reader a better 'feel' of the Sheridan charm and mystique. I do not cover the entirety of Sheridan's academic life or work as that has already been comprehensively documented in Andrew Phang, “Founding Father and Legal Scholar: The Life andWork of Professor LA Sheridan" [1999] Sing JLS 335. What follows is a recollection of the early days of Sheridan's life and of his journey to Singapore to establish its first law school.

This article examines the recoverability of mistaken payments made by bank transfer in practice in Singapore. It is now clearly established under Singapore law that a mistaken payor has a claim in unjust enrichment to recover his mistaken payment. However, it is not so easy for the mistaken payor to enforce his rights. In Singapore, this problem is particularly acute because of bank privacy laws in Singapore which make it difficult for a mistaken payor to discover the identity of the payee. Yet, without the ability to effectively enforce one's unjust enrichment rights, having those rights themselves is of little practical value. The article then proposes a simple way to make it significantly easier and cheaper for mistaken payors to enforce their unjust enrichment rights: by expanding the jurisdiction of the Small Claims Tribunal to encompass these claims. Doing so would enhance access to justice and should be warmly welcomed.

Holmes expressed doubts about the viability of Agency as a subject. This paper suggests that the law of Agency has a valid central core providing for the external powers of agents and their internal relations with their principals, surrounded by a considerable number of areas where agency principles are applied, but incompletely. There is a progression from the more central cases to situations where the agency analogy is weak or even sometimes misleading. In these extended applications it can be said that agency reasoning is only a tool requiring to be used with caution or even not used at all: but when the tool is acceptably used, features of the core of agency reasoning are still recognisably present.

Dishonest breach of trust by company directors was proscribed under section 405 of the Penal Code from inception. From this fundamental orientation departing from the English piecemeal treatment of embezzlement, false pretences and conspiracy to defraud, the article exposes differences in the way director's breach of trust is dealt with under section 405 and under the English statutory offence of embezzlement. Taking into account important backdrop perspectives which bear on the construction of section 409 as a punishability provision, it reaches conclusions opposite to the holding of the Court of Appeal in Lam Leng Hung (CA). One is that directors who commit dishonest breach of trust acting within the scope of authority fall to be punished more severely under the second agency-limb of section 409. Directors who knowingly act without authority in the company's name also do so but under the first limb. Finally, directors who misappropriate company property for personal use or benefit do not fall within section 409 and are punishable exclusively under section 406.

The legislative framework on dispositions of common property in the BMSMA is not entirely clear on the powers of a management corporation to permanently discard common property. This presents practical difficulties especially where it is inappropriate to undertake renewal or replacement of the same given the circumstances. Section 29(1)(d) of the BMSMA does not appear to confer such a power of disposal. This can be seen from the Hansard pertaining to the amendments made to this provision. Given the uncertainty engendered by the amendments themselves, the implications arising from case law and the relevant legislative provisions are considered, including the New SouthWales' experience on the matter.

The law on penalty clauses has, until recently, remained largely unchanged, with only minor developments over the years. However, there have been significant developments in both Australia and England and Wales in recent times. Singapore's position on the penalty rule has remained unchanged despite these developments. While some High Court authorities in Singapore have suggested that they are inclined towards adopting the developments seen in England and Wales, such a step should only be taken after careful consideration of the implications of these developments which are explored in this article. This article takes the opportunity to examine and evaluate the law on penalty clauses in various jurisdictions and discusses the key issues surrounding the law on penalty clauses, and the possible legislative reforms for Singapore.

In Audi Construction Pte Ltd v Kian Hiap Construction Pte Ltd, the Singapore Court of Appeal considered a payment claim to have been validly served although it was served earlier than the contractually stipulated date. This was because the service of the payment claim was "effective" only from the contractually stipulated date, and the claimant had had a "good reason" to serve the payment claim early. This note critically examines the reasoning in Audi vis-à-vis the existing law, the principle of freedom of contract, and the intentions of the parties in that case. In the absence of future judicial elaboration on the "effective service" and "good reason" doctrines, there is a risk that, in future, respondents may draw on these doctrines to delay or frustrate the attempts of claimants to recover payments rightly due to them. Moreover, given that the Court had found that the doctrine of estoppel would have operated in favour of the Claimant anyway, the creation of the "effective service" and "good reason" principles was not necessary.

Asnah bte Ab Rahman v Li Jianlin is a landmark 2016 Court of Appeal decision concerning the defence of contributory negligence in Singapore, especially where it concerns personal injury claims arising from motor accidents involving pedestrians. Aside from the rare dissenting judgment, the majority's judgment is controversial for its decision that a pedestrian, who made use of a signalised crossing with the signal in his favour, was contributorily negligent because he failed to check for vehicular traffic again at the centre-divider. The majority's judgment may be relied on by motorists and their insurers in cases far beyond the factual context in which it was made, with potentially unfair consequences. Indeed, its reasoning can be readily extended to other types of personal injury claims. Although decided in 2016, Asnah warrants a detailed analysis that considers its potential implications, given its significance.

In this collection of essays, Andrew Boon has brought together a team of experts on the legal profession from nine jurisdictions (the United States ("US"), Canada, Singapore, Eire, New Zealand, Israel, Australia, Germany, and England and Wales). Boon begins the introductory chapter by signposting the different regulatory models and spheres affecting legal professions. This is followed by substantive chapters on the regulation of the legal profession in each jurisdiction. Boon aptly concludes the volume with the final chapter on the common drivers and themes underlying the developments of the legal profession in those jurisdictions. This book will appeal to law academics, legal practitioners and policy-makers interested in the legal profession and comparative law.

Professor Tan's monograph The Law of Agency, first published in 2010, forms part of Academy Publishing's 'Law Practice Series' which aims to publish seminal works on key subject areas in legal practice. It is encouraging, to this end, to see the law of agency take its rightful position in this cast, rather than simply being relegated to a sub-set of contract law (where it not infrequently resides in law school syllabi). There is much more, after all, to the law of agency than its common (but not invariable) contractual foundation; agency inhabits, and interacts with, other core areas within the modern law of obligations, including those sourced from tort, property and equity.