Res ipsa loquitur applies when a plaintiff who is injured in an accident does not know the precise cause of the accident and has to rely on the occurrence of the accident itself, as an event which does not happen in the ordinary course of things without the negligence, to infer negligence on the part of the defendant. The plaintiff in such a situation is relying on circumstantial or indirect evidence to raise a prima facie case of negligence against the defendant. Used in this way, res ipsa loquitur is an ordinary rule of evidence and it is not peculiar to the tort of negligence. Recent cases in Singapore have adopted this view of the effect of res ipsa loquitur and a Supreme Court of Canada decision has recently held that the Latin phrase employed in this way is useless and confusing, and should be abandoned in the tort of negligence. However, res ipsa loquitur has been used in some older English cases as something beyond a general rule of evidence. It is a unique and a substantive rule of law that shifts the legal burden of proof from the plaintiff to the defendant. On this application of res ipsa loquitur, the plaintiff raises a prima facie case against the defendant from which a court must, at the conclusion of the case, infer negligence, unless the defendant gives a reasonable explanation to disprove the presumption of negligence against him. The defendant is prevented by this use of the doctrine as a special rule of law from exploiting his exclusive and advantageous knowledge of the exact cause of an accident to the detriment of a plaintiff. The issue that is confronted in this article is whether res ipsa loquitur should perish in Singapore as something that merely signifies an ordinary rule of evidence or survive as a unique rule of law in the tort of negligence to correct the imbalance of knowledge that arises in the appropriate cases of proof of negligence by circumstantial evidence.

This article is concerned with recent cases in which the Courts have made pronouncements on the scope and effect of Order 2 of the Rules of the Supreme Court. Order 2 governs the orders and directions which a court may give when there has been a failure to comply with the requirements of the rules of court.

This article looks at four aspects of by-laws in a strata scheme in Singapore. In particular, it examines: (a) the applicability of by-laws to units in a strata shopping mall; (b) the appropriateness of using by-laws, which do not apply to all unit owners, primarily to finance the running of a strata scheme; © the validity of by-laws not lodged as required; and (d) the enforcement of statutorily prescribed by laws before a management corporation is constituted. The legal position is discussed and solutions proposed, where applicable.

The purpose of this Note is to raise a question on which the rules of private international law of the common law, including Singapore, are less satisfactory than they should be. It is written in the light of one part of a seminar conducted at the Singapore Academy of Law in April 2005, but the proximate cause of the investigation was an enquiry as to the application of certain aspects of Singapore’s statutory employment law in cases in which the factual and legal context contains points of contact to countries outside Singapore, or to laws other than the law of Singapore. It is presented in the form of a Note because its aim is to raise the issue as one for thought and further analysis, rather than pretending to give answers which are, in the writer’s opinion, fixed and final. In the current state of the law’s development it is not possible to claim any more for any individual analysis.

In Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, standard retail investor protection laws do not apply to special categories of individual investors, which are broadly based on wealth or income. Prospectuses are not required for the sale of financial products to these investors and they do not have the full benefit of advice relating to the suitability of these products. However, with the increasing complexity of products and potentially unregulated alternative investments such as crypto-assets, this legal framework is increasingly being debated and challenged.We explore the rationale behind the special categories, the implications of falling into these categories and the appropriateness of the current framework. We argue that the existing criteria are anachronistic and inappropriate. Instead, all individuals making investment decisions should have the benefit of a rating framework that is based_x000D_ on both complexity and risks and be subject to a suitability test in the case of complex products.

The phrase "subject to contract" is generally understood in the context of the sale of land to mean that the parties are not bound until a formal contract is signed. The use of this expression can affect the formation of contract and/or its enforceability, which are or should be two separate issues. This article attempts to show the confusion of these two issues by the Courts in the understanding, interpretation and use of cases which have dealt with one or both of these issues and some consequences, actual or possible, of such confusion.

The use of agreements or concerted practices to keep parallel goods out of the European Union may result in a competition-law violation. Regardless of the status of the intellectual property rights embodied in goods first sold outside of the European Economic Area(EEA), the combination of restrictive agreements prohibiting export to the European Union, combined with a selective distribution system within the EEA that is in a position to exploit the resultant higher price in the market, could be found to violate Article 81 of the EC treaty. As the European Court of Justice slowly delineates the complexities of intellectual property exhaustion, the competition-law issues raised by global parallel trade may come to overshadow the intellectual property considerations that have driven Court of Justice jurisprudence.

Which law governs assets recorded on the blockchain? This question has long eluded legal academia and practice. Now, states have begun to enact hard and fast rules. This contribution compares legislative provisions of a number of states and a recently adopted text by UNIDROIT. The analysis of these rules shows the emergence of a new gulf in the conflict of laws. This gap must be overcome before the differences are further entrenched and reciprocated by other states which have not yet regulated the question. The means to do so is a uniform text of conflict of laws. An attempt will be made to distill an “ideal” conflicts rule for digital assets from the existing provisions. The proposal made here can serve as a blueprint for national legislation or case law. It is hoped that it will lead to a worldwide consensus in determining the law applicable to digital assets.