SINGAPORE: A woman who kept suing the National University of Singapore (NUS) after it terminated her candidature in 2006 has been restrained from pursuing any court action over the issue for two years.
Ms Jeanne-Marie Ten Leu Jiun was in a dispute with her supervisor and the ensuing developments led to the termination of her candidature.
In response, she launched multiple court actions against the university, seeking damages for several issues, including breach of contract, intimidation and negligence.
NUS turned to the High Court seeking an extended civil restraint order to stop Ms Ten from commencing any action or application in any court related to this issue.
In a judgment issued on Thursday (Jul 13), Justice Kwek Mean Luck granted NUS’ application and imposed a civil restraint order of two years on Ms Ten, the maximum period allowed.
Justice Kwek found that Ms Ten had “persistently commenced actions or made applications that are totally without merit”, pointing to the actions that were ruled to be so between 2020 and 2022.
However, he allowed Ms Ten to continue to pursue an ongoing case where she is seeking to privately prosecute then-NUS professor Lily Kong for perjury and obstruction of justice.
BACKGROUND
According to previous judgments in 2018 and 2021, Ms Ten completed her undergraduate studies at the University of East Anglia in 2000.
She began her candidature for the degree of Masters of Arts (Architecture) by research in January 2002 at the NUS School of Design and Environment, after NUS offered her admission and a research scholarship that she accepted.
She was supposed to complete her course and obtain her master’s degree by mid-2005. As a requirement, she had to complete a 40,000-word thesis, supervised by Dr Wong Yunn Chii, in order to graduate.
However, Ms Ten had disagreements with Dr Wong. She accused him of using her work in a project without acknowledging her.
After a confrontation about this, Dr Wong left without signing Ms Ten’s thesis submission form. According to him, he did not realise that he had not signed the supervisor’s report form.
Ms Ten submitted her thesis two days late, after getting a stand-in to sign on her form and obtaining an extension of her deadline.
She later wrote to school authorities to complain about Dr Wong, asking for him to be removed as her supervisor, but the Head of Department saw no reason to do so.
A Committee of Inquiry (COI), which included Prof Kong, was set up to look into Ms Ten’s complaint about Dr Wong’s conduct. The COI concluded that, among other things, Dr Wong had failed to comply fully with his duties as Ms Ten’s supervisor, and recommended that Dr Wong be censured for this failure.
However, when Prof Kong conveyed the findings to Ms Ten, she did not mention this finding of the COI.
Ms Ten later complained that the COI’s process was inadequate and lacked transparency. She had further disagreements with NUS about the requirements she needed to fulfil to receive her master’s degree.
She had been told that the examiners would be recommending to the Board of Graduate Studies that she be awarded the degree, but this was subject to her giving a more detailed account and analysis of certain areas in her thesis and making some changes.
Ms Ten was told that she had to submit an electronic thesis or dissertation submission form and a copy of her finalised thesis in a certain format, within a month.
Another professor was assigned for Ms Ten to consult on the changes to be made to her thesis.
However, Ms Ten continued to ask questions about her complaints against Dr Wong and objected to her thesis being sent for examination.
In the end, even though Ms Ten made the required revisions to her thesis, she did not comply with all the steps required. She did not upload the thesis electronically, nor sign and submit a required form.
As a result, NUS terminated her candidature in September 2006 before she obtained her master’s degree.
In Justice Woo Bih Li’s judgment dismissing her claims against NUS in 2018, he said he had “some sympathy” for Ms Ten, but that she “has only herself to blame”.
He said she allowed her view and distrust of Dr Wong to cloud her judgment in her interaction with those she complained to.
“While quick to criticise others, she could not see her own prejudices and how difficult she appeared to others. Her repetitive complaints about the examination process even after the successful outcome of the examination is perhaps one of the best illustrations of her jaundiced perception,” said Justice Woo.
“Her inability to differentiate between her complaints about Dr Wong and the requirements she had to comply with has led her to the unfortunate situation she finds herself in,” he added.