OON SWEE GEK & 2 Ors v VIOLET OON INC. PTE. LTD. & 2 Ors

Case Significance

Oon Swee Gek and others v Violet Oon Inc Pte Ltd and others and another matter [2024] SGHC 170 was a reserved judgment of the General Division of the High Court of Singapore, delivered by Philip Jeyaretnam J on 3 July 2024 following a hearing on 23 May 2024. It comprised Originating Claim No 301 of 2022 and Companies Winding Up No 195 of 2022 (the latter brought under ss 125(1)(f) and 125(1)(i) of the Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act 2018), and was a supplementary judgment to the court's earlier decision of 19 January 2024, Oon Swee Gek and others v Violet Oon Inc Pte Ltd and others [2024] SGHC 13 ("Violet Oon (Merits)").

In Violet Oon (Merits), the court had held that the second defendant, Murjani Manoj Mohan, had in 2019 procured a shareholders' agreement with the claimants — Oon Swee Gek, Tay Su-Lyn and Tay Yiming — through duress and undue influence, and set it aside, finding that his conduct amounted to commercial unfairness engaging s 216(1) of the Companies Act 1967. As reflected in the catchwords, this supplementary judgment dealt with the oppression remedy of ordering a sale of shares by a member to other members, including independent valuation of those shares for compulsory sale, and with the quantum of party-and-party costs under Appendix G of the Supreme Court Practice Directions 2021. The claimants were represented by Drew & Napier LLC and the defendants by TSMP Law Corporation, including Thio Shen Yi.