The State Courts have ruled against A Man’s lawsuit against the Singapore Kindness Movement ( SKM) over allegations that an affiliate promoted discrimination against transgender people.
Mr Martin Piper, 51, sued SKM, which is a non-government Institution of Public Character, for revealing his details to the internet in issue, Ms Carol Loi Pui Wan.
Ms Loi is the co-founder of , SGFamilies Ground-up Movement,  , which bills itself as being” by relatives, for kids” and “raising wholesome years up”. SKM supports it.
Unemployed Mr. Piper was suing SKM for damages and a claim that the company had violated the Personal Data Protection Act’s ( PDPA ) obligations.
His state involved an email he sent to SKM on August 27, 2022, complaining about Ms. Loi’s alleged participation with a “SG Households Watchgroup” Telegram party.
When an SKM employee copied her in a later email to Mr. Piper, Ms. Loi received a copy of his full name and email address.
Through a claim that Ms Loi filed against him later in violation of the Protection from Harassment Act ( POHA ), Mr. Piper claimed that this had violated SKM’s PDPA obligations and caused him to suffer financial losses and emotional distress.
However, the lawsuit was overturned by Deputy Principal District Judge Chiah Kok Khun in a wisdom dated November 12.
He discovered that Mr. Piper had given his information to SKM in order to investigate the problem, which presupposed that he had given his consent to the disclosure of it.
The plaintiff had provided his personal information. He requested an analysis from the accused and lodged a problem. He did not request for his personality to be anonymised. The judge ruled that “he is fairly presumed to have consented to the reporting of his personal data.”
Mr. Piper claimed in an email that a Telegram group called “SG Families Watchgroup” was “propagating biased and false material that is intended to attack and abuse transgender people.”
He claimed that Ms Loi, the group’s owner, was Ms. Loi, and that he had hoped that SKM may contact her to take control of it and get rid of its “nasty information.”
Mr. Karun S’baram, a SKM employee, responded to Ms. Loi on Sep. 1, 2022, saying that she had clarified that the Telegram group was not affiliated with the SGFamilies Ground-Up Movement, that she was not the team’s leader or owner, and that she had personally participated in the organization as a concerned citizen.
Mr. Karun copied Ms. Loi, telling him that it would be best for her to reply to Mr. Piper immediately after receiving more information about Ms. Loi’s claimed involvement.
SKM also revealed Mr. Piper’s information to Ms Loi three more times during the test, after when its then-governor, Dr. William Wan, revealed the personality of the complainant to her and once when Mr. Karun blindly copied her in a email to Mr. Piper.
However, the judge determined that Mr. Piper should have anticipated that SKM, which represented Senior Counsel Gregory Vijayendran and Meher Malhotra of Rajah &, Tann, would have anticipated that his identity would have been revealed during the inspection.
He added that Mr. Piper did not request that his message letter get kept private and confidential, nor did he request anonymity.
The judge added that the organization was forthcoming about facilitating a conversation and quality between them and that there was no “bad faith” by SKM in disclosing Mr. Piper’s identification to Ms. Loi.