A husband-and-wife pair, Raymond Ng Kai Hoe and Iris Koh, have been ordered to pay S$12,000 in costs to the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) after they failed in their bid to secure judicial review against the authority.
The Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) told Mothership on Sep. 27 that the court granted HSA's bid for the case to be struck out entirely after it found that the couple's application was an abuse of process.
Filed application
The duo had filed an application for judicial review to get a mandatory order for HSA to investigate and prosecute entities using celebrities to advertise vaccination, the statement said.
Judicial review is a process where the High Court exercises its supervisory function over a public body.
The hearing took place on Sep. 19, with AGC acting on behalf of HSA.
AGC filed an application to have the case struck out on the basis that HSA had already investigated the matter, the AGC said.
The couple was seeking "an academic or hypothetical interpretation of the law which was an abuse of the court's process", AGC added,
The judge ruled that the judicial review application "disclosed no reasonable cause of action", and was an abuse of process.
The judge also decided that it was in the interests of justice to strike out the application, AGC said.
The S$12,000 in costs payable to HSA is for striking out the application, as well as two other applications the couple had brought.
Asked for donations
Koh, 48, asked for support to pay the S$12,000 costs.
"Despite this setback, we've learned a great deal from this experience about the complexities of pursuing a judicial review," she wrote, adding:
"This knowledge will be invaluable as we consider future actions to uphold public rights."
She also wrote that she learnt that the bar for striking out is high, but the bar for a judicial review is "even higher".
The process will "help us prepare for the next JR", she added.
Koh and her husband have mounted several cases against people or entities, for reasons like alleged defamation or breach of contract.
Koh currently faces a litany of other charges and is due back in court in October.
Top photo via Raymond Ng on Facebook