Somebody Definitely Overcharged

Thanks to a partisan mainstream media, we were more than enlightened with the inglorious details of how surgeon Susan Lim overcharged her royal patient from Brunei. The Business Times online report (2 July 2014) was first to break the story of how lawyers for the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) - Senior Counsel Alvin Yeo and Melanie Ho of WongPartnership (WongP) - overcharged for their work against Dr Lim. Unfortunately we missed it it because of travel to wifi challenged locations; this is note for self.

Lim's husband Deepak Sharma - ex-Citi Private Bank global chairman - had disputed WongP's bills. In particular, in one of the bills, WongP was charging what amounted to $77,102 for each day they were in court. In another, it was $46,729 for each day in court. And for the third bill, the lawyers' charges worked out to be $100,000 per hour of hearing.

The total bill from the WongP lawyers - which amounted to $1.007 million - was brought before a taxation hearing, and the assistant registrar reduced WongP's tally of costs to $340,000 - about a third of the original demanded. When Mr Yeo and Ms Ho applied to have this decision reviewed, High Court judge Woo Bih Li eventually allowed a total sum of $370,000.

Sharma subsequently lodged a complaint to the Law Society of Singapore (Lawsoc), alleging, "I believe that the actions by the lawyers in grossly overcharging my wife by $637,009 (the difference between the original bill amount of $1.007 million and the $370,000 allowed by Justice Woo) are dishonourable and constitute grossly improper conduct."

Lawsoc's review committee (RC) looking into the complaint dismissed the charges against Yeo, on grounds that Yeo was not involved in the preparation of the bills, and therefore there was no misconduct on his part. Something akin to saying Hitler is not responsible in the extermination of 6 million Jews, since he did not operate the gas chambers.

Last we heard, Sharma was applying for a judicial review of this decision by the RC, first time ever someone in Singapore has applied for a judicial review of a review committee's decision - definitely a shoo-in entry for the Guinness Book of Records. He also had to apply for the admission of a Queen's Counsel, Michael Fordham, to represent him for the forbidding battle ahead as all of the over 20 Singapore Senior Counsels he approached declined to engage in legal combat. The heavy artillery is understandable since Yeo is also a People’s Action Party MP (Chua Chu Kang GRC). That plus the big bucks involved.

the list is long but distinguished....