It is an oft-repeated truism that damages are compensatory. Errant doctrines which recognise the possibility of monetary recovery in excess of loss, such as punitive damages, are marginalised as anomalies. Others, such as negotiating damages, are uncomfortably shoehorned into the Procrustean bed of compensation. Cost-of-cure damages have likewise become a casualty of the law’s apparent fixation on compensation. Despite suggestions to the contrary, these damages are often treated as simply one measure of loss. That approach has thrown up difficult questions about the dual roles of the claimant’s intention to effect cure and the reasonableness of curing. In Terrenus Energy SL2 Pre Ltd v Attika Interior + MEP Pte Ltd [2025] SGHC(A) 4, the Appellate Division of the High Court was called on to revisit these questions, which had previously been confronted in JSD Corporation Pte Ltd v Tri-Line Express Pte Ltd [2022] SGHC 227.

Under s 359(1) of the Criminal Procedure Code 2010, the court can order an offender to compensate the victim with a sum which the victim would have been able to recover in a civil claim in tort against the offender. The courts have used this useful power extensively, though problems remain. One such problem is seen in Ong Eng Siew, where the court declined to make a compensation order. Given the purpose of the compensation system, the court was not correct to hold – in effect – that the purpose of s 359(1) is to benefit only impecunious victims, and that the Prosecution bears the burden of proving that the victim is impecunious. Further, the compensation order should have covered not only medical expenses paid by the victim in cash, but also those paid using Central Provident Fund savings and MediShield Life insurance payouts. This comment also calls for further study of the compensation regime in practice and possible procedural reforms to make it easier for victims to have prosecutors present evidence relevant to the issue of compensation.