[Webinar] Understanding how ‘statutory assignments’ under section 4(8), Civil Law Act 1909 ‘pass’ debts and other choses in action

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Understanding how ‘statutory assignments’ under section 4(8), Civil Law Act 1909 ‘pass’ debts and other choses in action

Synopsis

In England, ‘transfers’ of legal choses in action have been facilitated by the Court of Chancery since the seventeenth century through the mechanism of ‘equitable assignment’, though equitable assignments had limited effect at common law. But, as summarised in Snell’s Equity:

The old common law rule against the assignment of chose[s] in action was gradually relaxed. ... Ultimately, by the [Supreme Court of] Judicature Act 1873..., ‘any debt or other legal thing in action’ was made assignable at law.

Chancery’s construct of ‘equitable assignment’ was received pursuant to the Second Charter of Justice of 1826 to form part of the law of Singapore. And s 4(8), Civil Law Act 1909, being in pari materia with s 25(6), replicates the outcomes generated by that provision in England. Still, understanding how s 25(6), and s 4(8), its Singaporean equivalent, do their work is difficult. Greater clarity can be had by considering Lord Esher MR’s explication of s 25(6) in Read v Brown (1888) 22 QBD 128 that a ‘statutory’ assignment of a debt makes it ‘as though the debt [or chose] had been [the assignee’s] from the beginning.’ Though this statement was accepted by the Singapore Court of Appeal in The Jarguh Sawit [1997] 3 SLR(R) 829, which was followed by the Singapore High Court (Appellate Division) in POA Recovery Pte Ltd v Yau Kwok Seng [2022] 1 SLR 1165, the Singapore Court of Appeal suggested in BXH v BXI [2020] 1 SLR 1043 that the position set out in The Jarguh Sawit was doubtful.

This seminar will explain what and how s 4(8) ‘passes’ and ‘transfers’ the entitlements spelt out within it, and how that explanation allows for a path to be threaded through these decisions.

Programme

Time (SGT)	Event
4:15pm	Registration Participant to login via zoom
4:30pm	Introduction Professor David Fox (moderator)
4:35pm	Presentation Professor Tham Chee Ho
5:20pm	Comments by moderator Professor David Fox
5:30pm	Q&A session
6:00pm	End of Webinar

Moderator

Professor David Fox
Professor of Common Law
University of Edinburgh

David Fox is the Professor of Common Law at the University of Edinburgh. He completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Otago in New Zealand and received his PhD degree from the University of Cambridge. Before coming to Edinburgh, he was for many years a Fellow of St John’s College in the University of Cambridge.

He is a contributor to the trust law sections of Snell’s Equity, the author of Property Rights in Money (Oxford 2008), and the joint editor with W Ernst of Money in the Western Legal Tradition: Middle Ages to Bretton Woods (2016). His research interests concentrate on the formation of modern trust and property doctrine in common law systems, and on the private law applicable to money and digital assets. He is the joint editor with Professor Sarah Green of Cryptocurrencies in Public and Private Law (2019), and a member of the drafting committee of the UNIDROIT project on “Digital Assets and Private Law”.

Presenter

Professor Tham Chee Ho
Professor of Law
Yong Pung How School of Law
Singapore Management University

Tham Chee Ho received his LL.B. from the National University of Singapore, and the B.C.L. and D.Phil. from Oxford University. He has been Professor of Law at the Yong Pung How SMU School of Law since 2019. His monograph, Understanding the Law of Assignment was published by the Cambridge University Press in 2019. He is also a contributor to The Law of Contract in Singapore (Academy Publishing, 2022), now in its second edition. Although his current focus is on the law of assignment, he has written on private law topics ranging from contract remedies to cross-border insolvency. Given his general interest in private law, his work has been published in many journals, including the Cambridge Law Journal, the Conveyancer and Property Lawyer, the Law Quarterly Review, the Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly, the Journal of Equity, and the Journal of Contract Law, as well as numerous edited collections of essays.

Date

21 November 2022
(Monday)

Time

4:30pm - 6:00pm
(Singapore time)

Format

Virtual via Zoom

Fees*

a. Public Registration: S$42.80

b. Group Registration: S$38.52
applies if there are at least 10 participants from the same organisation

c. SMU Alumni (LLB / JD / LLM graduates): S$38.52

* fee per person, and inclusive of GST

Public CPD Points

1.0 point

Practice Area

Civil Procedure

Training Category

Advanced

SILE Attendance Policy

Participants who wish to obtain CPD Points are reminded that they must comply strictly with the Attendance Policy set out in the CPD Guidelines. For this activity, this includes logging in at the start of the webinar and logging out at the conclusion of the webinar in the manner required by the organiser, and not being away from the entire activity for more than 15 minutes. Participants who do not comply with the Attendance Policy will not be able to obtain CPD Points for attending the activity. Please refer to http://www.sileCPDcentre.sg for more information.

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