SINGAPORE: A court has dismissed an elderly woman’s claims for damages from a town council over injuries she sustained falling into an uncovered drain.
Madam Chan Chui Yoke, 71, had sued Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council for more than S$60,000 in damages.
She lived in Block 276, Bangkit Road and had crossed an uncovered drain in order to water some plants on Feb 8, 2021.
She said she watered the plants purely out of “goodwill”.
When she was done, she attempted to cross the drain again but accidentally fell into it, hitting her face on the pavement and landing on her right hand.
She argued that the town council had breached its duty of care. As a result, she incurred medical bills, transportation expenses and experienced pain and suffering.
The town council was represented by Ms Grace Tan of WhiteFern LLC, while Mdm Chan was represented by Mr Muhammad Hariz Tahir and Ms Michelle Kaur from Clifford Law.
In a judgment obtained by CNA on Tuesday (Feb 21), District Judge Teo Guan Kee dismissed Mdm Chan’s claim in its entirety.
He said Mdm Chan had already crossed the drain once before the accident. He found that visibility in the area would not have materially changed in that time.
“She would therefore have been familiar with the state of the uncovered drain when she made her second attempt to traverse the same, regardless of how the defendant had cleaned it,” he said.
Mdm Chan had argued that she had fallen into the uncovered portion of the drain because she had difficulty differentiating between the “dirty drain” and drain covers.
The judge added that Mdm Chan had “acted with full knowledge of the risk of harm when she chose to cross the perimeter drain at a location where it was uncovered”.
Mdm Chan had testified that she was “very careful” when crossing the drain on the first instance, leading the judge to say there was no reason why she would not have appreciated the need to be careful in the second crossing.
He said she appreciated the risk of making the crossing and chose to do so.
The judge accepted that there was a common practice of town councils leaving perimeter drains at least partially uncovered, and that the Holland-Bukit Panjang Town Council adhered to such a practice.
He said there was “no evidence here that the plaintiff took any steps to mitigate the risk, which I have said she fully appreciated, of traversing the uncovered portion of the perimeter drain”.
He also said there was no evidence that people in the area fell into the uncovered drain “on any significant number of occasions or with any meaningful frequency”.
“The likelihood of anyone meeting with an incident of the sort for which the plaintiff has brought this action, cannot therefore be said to be high,” he said.
He ordered parties to write in within seven days on their proposed timelines on the making of written submissions on costs.