Law Society ordered to refund $32k to Christopher de Souza following acquittal

The Law Society of Singapore has been ordered to refund more than $32,000 in legal costs to MP and lawyer Christopher de Souza, in the wake of his acquittal on a professional misconduct charge.

Mr de Souza had paid the sum to the Law Society after a disciplinary tribunal found him guilty in 2022 of helping a client suppress evidence that it had breached an undertaking not to use certain documents.

In July 2023, the Court of Three Judges overturned the tribunal’s findings and cleared him of the charge. On Tuesday, the court issued written grounds setting out detailed reasons for its decision.

The judges differed in their views of whether sufficient disclosure had been made, but were unanimous in concluding that Mr de Souza did not intend to help in the suppression of evidence.

On the issue of legal costs, the court ordered the Law Society to refund Mr de Souza $18,000 in costs and $14,394.12 in out-of-pocket expenses.

The judges, however, were not convinced that the Law Society should be made to pay costs to Mr de Souza, who is a Holland-Bukit Timah GRC MP.

In arguing for such a costs order, his lawyer contended that the Law Society had prosecuted Mr de Souza “in an oppressive and unjustified manner” because its investigations had gone outside the scope of the original complaint.

But the judges said the Law Society was entitled to investigate matters beyond those in the complaint, and that they were unable to conclude that the Law Society had acted in bad faith.

The case centred on an affidavit that Mr de Souza, a partner at Lee & Lee, had drafted and filed while he was acting for Amber Compounding Pharmacy and Amber Laboratories.

Amber had sued a former employee and her company for allegedly stealing its trade secrets.

In April 2018, Amber was represented by another law firm when it was granted a court order to carry out a search for documents, on condition that it give an undertaking to the court not to use the documents without further order.

However, Amber used some documents to file reports with various authorities between July and October 2018.

Lee & Lee took over the case on Dec 14, 2018, and six days later, the team formed the view that Amber had breached its undertaking.

On Jan 29, 2019, Amber applied for permission to use the documents. Mr de Souza helped a company representative prepare a supporting affidavit.

This became the contentious point of whether the breach had been disclosed in the affidavit and whether Mr de Souza had intention to suppress evidence.

After the application was eventually decided by the Court of Appeal, a letter was sent on behalf of the court to the Law Society.

It noted that Mr de Souza made no mention of Amber’s use of the documents at a pre-trial conference but had sought a time extension on behalf of his client. The letter questioned if Mr de Souza was privy to the purpose of the extension.

An inquiry committee constituted to look into the case recommended that he be fined $2,000 for failing to tell the court that he had advised Amber to apply for permission in relation to the documents.

The council of the Law Society, however, disagreed and sought the appointment of a disciplinary tribunal to formally investigate the matter.

The tribunal found that Mr de Souza had helped Amber suppress evidence because he did not exhibit in the affidavit the reports that had been made to the authorities.

In the written grounds, the three judges were split on whether there was sufficient disclosure of Amber’s breach in the affidavit.

Justices Belinda Ang and Woo Bih Li found that the affidavit sufficiently admitted that Amber had made use of information from the documents.

Justice Kannan Ramesh, on the other hand, concluded that Amber failed to give full and frank disclosure of how it had breached its undertaking.

Specifically, the affidavit was silent on the fact that excerpts of the seized documents had been provided to the authorities. “It was lacking in a material respect and conveyed an incomplete picture to the court,” he said.

However, all three judges agreed that intention was a necessary ingredient of the charge against Mr de Souza.

In other words, the tribunal ought to have considered whether the non-disclosure of the reports as exhibits was intentionally facilitated by Mr de Souza. But the tribunal erred by treating the question of intent as irrelevant.

The court said there was no evidence that Mr de Souza intended to assist Amber to suppress its breach. On the contrary, the drafting history of the affidavit showed that he and his team consistently intended to disclose the breach.

A statement from Mr de Souza’s lawyers from WongPartnership said he “is humbled by this result and feels fully vindicated, allowing him to continue focusing on his many duties – to family, country and practice”.