Karuppiah Ravichandran v GDS Engineering Pte Ltd and Another

Kan Ting Chiu J:

[1] The applicant is seeking to have the decision of the Commissioner for Labour against him set aside or reversed. The applicant had made a claim for compensation under the Workmen’s Compensation Act (Cap 354 1998 Rev Ed)) for back injuries he said he had sustained on 26 April 2006 while he was lifting a motor pump in the course of his work. (This Act was amended and renamed the Work Injury Compensation Act on 1 April 2008. I shall refer to the Act in its pre and post amendment forms as “the Act”.)

[2] The applicant’s employers are liable to pay compensation under s 3(1) of the Act:

[3] The applicant’s claim came on for hearing before a Commissioner of Labour (“Commissioner”) between 29 August 2007 and 8 May 2008. After hearing the evidence of the applicant, a co-worker and their supervisor who were present at the time of the alleged accident and two doctors who saw the applicant, the Commissioner found that the applicant had not incurred the back injuries out of and in the course of his employment.

[4] The applicant was not satisfied with the Commissioner’s decision and applied to have it set aside or reversed. However, his right of appeal against the Commissioner is limited under s 29(2A) of the Act which states:

[5] In the application, the applicant stated that substantial questions of law were involved in this matter and set out a list of 23 criticisms and disagreements the applicant had against the Commissioner’s findings. Matters came into sharper focus when the application came on for hearing, and in the written closing submissions, the grounds were narrowed to:

[6] Section 3(6) states:

[7] The effect of s 29(2A) is that the decisions of the Commissioner are not appealable unless:

[8] This provision reflects a policy decision that work injury claims are to be heard by the Commissioners and that their decisions are final, save where substantial serious questions of law are involved, and even then, only in cases where the amount in dispute is not less than $1,000.

[9] Decisions of the Commissioner are not to be examined as though they are decisions of a court of law. Their hearings are not conducted as hearings in courts of law. The rules of evidence do not have to be applied strictly; reg 16 of the Workmen’s Compensation Regulations which was in force till 1 April 2008, and reg 9 of the Work Injury Compensation Regulations 2008, which came into force on the same day, state that:

[10] What is a “substantial question of law” that is needed under s 29(2A)? Counsel for the employers referred to the decision of the Indian Supreme Court in Kondiba Dagadu Kadam v Savitribai Sopangujar & Ors [1999] 2 LRI 617. This was not a work injury claim. It was a claim for specific performance arising from a disposal of agreement for the sale of land. When the claim was dismissed, the plaintiff appealed against the decision and the appeal (the first appeal) was allowed. However, the defendant then lodged an appeal (the second appeal) to the High Court, which reviewed the evidence and interfered with the findings of the first appellate court. The matter then went before the Supreme Court on the question whether the High Court should have heard the second appeal. The right to appeal to the High Court was governed by s 100 of the Code of Civil Procedure 1908:

[11] The Supreme Court set aside the decision of the High Court and restored the decision of the first appellate court. In the judgment delivered by R P Sethi J, he quoted with approval in [3] a passage from another decision of the Supreme Court in Sir Chunilal V Mehta & Sons Ltd v Century Spinning and Manufacturing Co Ltd AIR 1962 SC 1314; [1962] Supp 3:

and at [5] Sethi J added that:

[12] Sethi J found that the findings of the first appellate court were based on an appreciation of the evidence, and the finding was not perverse or unsupported by evidence, and he concluded in [7] that:

[13] These decisions of the Supreme Court do not appear to have been considered by our courts, which have taken a broader approach to the issue. In Ng Swee Lang and Another v Sassoon Samuel Bernard and Others [2008] 1 SLR 522, Andrew Ang J reviewed the decisions on the “question of law” issue. He referred to cases on appeals from arbitration awards, namely Northern Elevator Manufacturing Sdn Bhd v United Engineers (Singapore) Pte Ltd (No 2) [2004] 2 SLR 494, Ahong Construction (S) Pte Ltd v United Boulevard Pte Ltd [2000] 1 SLR 749, and on appeals from statutory bodies, namely, MC Strata Title No 958 v Tay Soo Seng [1993] 1 SLR 870 and Koh Gek Hwa v Yang Hwai Ming [2003] 4 SLR 316. He also quoted a passage from Halsbury’s Laws of England Vol 1(1) (Butterworths, 4 Ed Reissue 1989) (“Halsbury”) para 70:

and a passage from Lord Radcliffe’s judgment in Edwards v Bairstow [1956] AC 14 at 35–36 that:

[14] Ang J came to the conclusion that the “question of law” test for appeals from arbitrators is different from the test for appeals from statutory board decisions, and that for the latter appeals, the quoted passages from Halsbury and Edwards v Bairstow apply, and I concur with his conclusion.

[15] I do not think the passage from Halsbury means that any one of the listed errors would constitute a sufficient error of law for an appeal. The nature and effect of the error should be considered and there will be appeals when there are errors which have a bearing on the ultimate decision. For the present purposes, the requirement for there to be a substantial question of law makes that abundantly clear.

[16] When Lord Radcliffe referred to findings ex facie erroneous in point of law and to findings which no person properly instructed on the proper law could have come to, I understand the second category of findings to be findings that no person would have come to if he had applied the law properly. It does not mean that every manifestly wrong finding of fact amounts to an error of law.

[17] In Next of kin of Ramu Vanniyar Ravichandran v Fongsoon Enterprises (Pte) Ltd [2008] 3 SLR 105, errors in findings of fact arising out of errors of law were found to be made by the Commissioner. This case also arose from a claim under the Workmen’s Compensation Act. The issue was whether a workman who died whilst operating a forklift was an employee of a company. He had been engaged on a part-time basis by Meera, the foreman of the company. The Commissioner found that the deceased was not an employee of the respondent company because:

[18] On appeal to the High Court, Choo Han Teck J confirmed that Meera had no actual authority to engage the deceased. After a review of the evidence, Choo J concluded at [22] that:

and at [25] that the issue was not to be decided by Meera’s express or implied authority, and that:

and he found that there was apparent authority.

[19] As for the question whether the deceased was driving the forklift for some purpose that was in connection with the respondent’s work, Choo J found at [29] that:

[20] Having found that the Commissioner had made these wrong findings of fact resulting from errors in not considering apparent authority and not applying s 3(4), Choo J held that substantial questions of law had been raised, and allowed the appeal. The point to note is that the two errors related to the application of the law, and they had led the Commissioner to reject the claim for compensation.

[21] The applicant argued that the Commissioner had erred in failing to apply the presumption in s 3(6) that:

[22] The applicant argued that when the Commissioner held that:

she had placed the burden of proof on the applicant when the burden was on the respondent to rebut the presumption.

[23] That part of the Commissioner’s grounds must be read with a latter part of her grounds where she stated:

but the applicant did not give equal attention to.

[24] It is important to place equal weight to both parts of the grounds. The presumption in s 3(6) does not arise whenever a worker is injured in an accident. It applies to accidents arising in the course of his employment. When the Commissioner found that the accident did not arise in the course of the applicant’s employment, the presumption in s 3(6) did not apply.

[25] The applicant took issue that the Commissioner did not make reference to s 3(6) and may have been unaware of it. The Commissioner’s silence does not imply ignorance or oversight because the effect of the findings was that the presumption did not apply. Even if the Commissioner had overlooked the presumption (and it is not clear that she did that), the fact remained that on her findings, the presumption did not apply.

[26] The Commissioner found there was ambiguity whether the applicant had lifted the pump and contradictory accounts by the applicant of the back pains he experienced at the time of the accident.

[27] The Commissioner referred to the evidence of the applicant, his supervisor Lim Beng Huat, his co-worker Sangaran Jayaprahash and two doctors, Dr S R E Sayampanathan and Dr Yu Ching Sing, who saw the applicant before she made her findings.

[28] Counsel for the applicant submitted that the findings were not supported by the evidence, and referred to the notes of evidence to support her contention that the Commissioner had erred in her reading of some parts of the evidence.

[29] On examining the submissions, I find that the complaints do not relate to questions of law (such as the alleged failure to apply the presumption in s 3(6)), and no error of law can be assumed to have been made which resulted in those findings. If the findings were wrong, they were errors of fact which did not point to any question of law.