Law governed in Singapore

1. MA2026
Maritime Law and Personnel Management
Presented by Capt Chatur Wahyu

2. Basics of Contract, Agency and Tort
The Law of Contract
• With the economic and social development of modern societies, the need for
a law of contract becomes far more pressing for at least two reasons.
• In the first place, the division of labour, which is such a fundamental feature of
modern societies, creates an increasing demand for the transfer of property
from some members of the community to others and for the performance of
services by some members of the community for others.
• The legal machinery by which these transfers of property and performance of
services is carried out is the law of contract.
• Contract law is thus, the law of exchange, the law that regulates the methods
by which individuals exchange goods and services usually in return for money.

3. The Law of Contract
Definition of Contract
• A Contract is a legally binding agreement.
• It can also be defined as a promise or set of promises which the Law will
enforce.

4. The Law of Contract
Essential Requirements of a Contract
• Agreement arises as a result of an offer and an acceptance, but a number of
other requirements must be satisfied for an agreement to be legally binding.
• There must be:
1. consideration.
2. the parties must have an intention to create legal relations.
3. the parties must have the capacity to contract.
4. the agreement must comply with any formal legal requirements.
5. the agreement must be legal.
6. the agreement must not be rendered void either by some common law
or statutory rule or by some inherent defect, such as operative mistake.

5. The Law of Contract
Classification of Contracts
• There are three main types of contracts. These are as follows:
• A Contract of Record
• A Contract under Seal (Specialty Contract or Deed)
• A Simple Contract
1. A Contract of Record
• It is in point of fact not a contract at all,
and has nothing whatever to do with the
law of contract.
• They came to be called contracts only
because they were enforceable by the
same type of action as was used for
genuine contractual cases in the common-law system of procedure.

6. The Law of Contract
2. A Contract under Seal
• Contracts under seal bear little resemblance to ordinary contracts.
• A contract under seal, that is to say a deed, is a written promise or a set of
promises which derives it validity from the form.
• The deed should be signed, sealed and delivered.
3. A Simple Contract
• A Simple Contract is an informal contract, either in writing or implied, thereby
creating legal obligations and rights.
• It can become a contract by implication from the conduct of the parties.
• For example, a person who boards a bus is in fact, entering into an agreement,
impliedly, to pay his fare for the journey.

7. The Law of Contract
The Making of a Contract
• The typical contract is essentially a two-sided bargain, which can only be
concluded by the actions of both parties.
• Thus, it is necessary that two or more parties should have reached an
agreement.
• Generally speaking, this is done by the procedure of offer and acceptance, and
made binding either under seal or supported by consideration.
In the words of Pollock:
“One party proposes his terms; the other accepts, rejects, or meets them with a
counter-proposal: and thus they go on till there is a final refusal and breaking-off,
or until one of them names terms which the other can accept as they stand”.

8. The Law of Contract
The Offer
• It is defined as an expression of willingness to contract made with the intention that is
shall become binding on the person making it as soon as it is accepted by the person to
whom it is addressed.
• An offer is, in effect, a promise by the offeror to do or abstain from doing something,
provided that the offeree will accept the offer and pay or promise to pay the ‘price’ of
the offer.
• The price, of course, need not be a monetary one.
The Acceptance
• It is defined as a final and unqualified expression of assent to the terms of an offer.
• The acceptance of an offer is the act, which completes the formation of the contract.
• Until acceptance there is nothing but a revocable offer, which binds nobody.

9. The Law of Contract
Terms of a Contract
• A Contract may contain either express or implied terms, or both.
• Parties to the Contract may detail and state every term of their contract with
varying degrees of precision or they may only agree on the basic purpose of a
contract and leave the detailed terms to be implied from other circumstances.
Express Term
• A provision of a contract agreed to by the
parties in words, written or spoken.
• It may constitute either a condition of the
contract or a warranty.

10. The Law of Contract
Implied Term
• It is a provision of a contract not agreed to by the parties in words but either
regarded by the courts as necessary to give effect to their presumed intentions
or introduced into the contract by statute.
• A term may be implied if it is necessary in the business sense to give efficiency
to the contract.
Condition
• A condition is a major term of a contract.
• It is of vital importance where failure to observe a condition by one party
would entitle the other party to treat the contract as being discharged.
Warranty
It is a term or promise in a contract, breach of which will entitle the innocent party
to damages but not to treat the contract as discharged by breach.

11. The Law of Contract
Right to Terminate a Contract
• A breach of a duty arising under the contract may give rise to the right to
terminate a contract.
• A breach of such a duty may take one of the following forms:
1. Non-Performance
Complete non-performance by one party naturally gives the other party the right
to treat the contract as terminated.
2. Repudiation
An intimidation, whether by words or by conduct, that a party declines to continue
with the contract, is a repudiation if the result is likely to deprive the innocent
party of substantially the whole benefit of the contract.

12. The Law of Contract
3. Defective Performance
• The third case of breach is that of defective performance.
• This term is used in a wide sense to include all cases where there is a partial
performance, or a complete performance which yet does not comply in all
respects with the contract, such as belated performance.

13. The Law of
Contract
The Unfair Contract Terms Act
1977
This Act is the first general statutory
attempt to deal with the problem of
unfair contract terms.
It deals only with exemption clauses
and does not deal with the whole
subject of unfair contracts.
The simplest reform carried out by the
1977 Act is that it imposes a total ban
on exemption clauses which concern
negligence actions for personal injury
or fatal accidents and is now unaffected
by contractual exclusion clauses.

14. The Law of Agency Introduction
• The Law of Agency is the legislation
dealing with agents who are persons
appointed by another to make
contracts on their behalf.
• It is about the relationship between a
principal and the agent, including the
rights, duties and liabilities of both
parties.
Definition of Agency
• Agency may be defined as the
relationship an agent and the principal.
• An agent is one that is appointed by
another (the principal) to act on
his/her behalf, often to negotiate a
contract between the principal and a
third party.

15. The Law of Agency
• The principal employs the agent and he will contract on behalf of that
principal.
• An agent does not enter into a contract on his own behalf, and therefore does
not require full possession of full contractual capacity.
• From the definition of agency it is conclusive that the most important function
of an agent is to make contracts on behalf of his principal, which in turn sets
up various relationships between the principal and the agent.
• These are: -
a. The relationship between the principal and the agent.
b. The relationship between the principal and a third party.
c. The relationship between the agent and the third party.

16. The Law of Agency
Creation of an Agency
An agency may be created by express appointment, by implication, by necessity
and by ratification.
Express Appointment
This is the most common way of creating an agency and thereby effecting a
relationship between principal and agent, is by consent.
In this way the agent may be appointed either by Deed or in writing or even by
word of mouth.
In circumstances where an agent is appointed to execute a Deed on behalf of his
principal, then his appointment must be also by Deed.
In this circumstance, the agency is called a "Power of Attorney".

17. The Law of Agency
Implied Agency
Agencies may be implied in various
circumstances and can arise through
implication from a commercial
relationship. For example, through
the directorship of a company.
Apparent Authority
An agent can have what is termed
apparent authority and as such, the
principal is responsible for the acts
of his agent within such apparent
authority, even if they are not within
his actual authority.

18. The Law of Agency
Rights of an Agent
• In Law an agent has every right to be indemnified by his principal if he incurs
any liability or advances money in the performance of his duties as an agent.
• However, he would lose this right if he acted in any unauthorised way or did
not follow strictly the instructions of his principal.
• An agent is entitled a right to exercise a lien by retaining goods belonging to
another person as security for the payment of a debt.
• It must be pointed out that such a lien is possessory in that an agent can only
claim a lien if he has lawful possession of the particular property concerned.
• If he parts with those goods on a voluntary basis then he, in effect, loses
possession and of course, loses his right to lien the goods.

19. The Law of Agency
Duties of the Principal
• It is the principal's duty to remunerate or pay any agreed commission and he
must not prevent the agent from actually earning his remuneration.
• The agent has a possessory lien over the goods belonging to his principal until
such time as the principal settles his commission in full.
Breach of Warranty of Authority
• An agent who enters into a contract with a third party (for and on behalf of a
principal) by implication warrants that he or she has the authority to do so.
• If this is not the case, the third party has the right to sue the agent for breach
of warranty of authority.

20. Agent of
Necessity
• This type of agency would arise in circumstances where a particular
person was entrusted with goods belonging to someone else and it
becomes necessary to take certain action to preserve the property in
an emergency situation.
• This could be likened to a Master of a vessel having to take action, on
behalf of his owners in an emergency situation.
• In those circumstances, he would have to prove that it was impossible
to get instructions from his principal because he could not
communicate with them and he would also have to establish that the
action he took was of real necessity.
• For example, if a Master of a vessel had to arrange the sale of a cargo
to prevent it from perishing.

21. The Law of Agency
Termination Of An Agency
There are several ways whereby an agency may be terminated. They are:
a. By mutual agreement between the parties involved.
b. A principal may, at any time, revoke the agent's authority and so prevent him
from making binding contracts with third parties.
c. Renunciation by the agent.
d. By complete performance of the duties and the obligations by the parties to the
agreement.
e. An agency may be terminated by the operation of the Law, i.e.
- By death of the principal or agent.
- By bankruptcy or insanity of the principal or agent.
- By frustration of the contract.
- By intervening illegality of the contract.
- Where an agency has been created for a limited time, termination can come about
by affluxion of that particular time.

22. The Law of Tort
Tort defined
• Tort may be defined as a civil wrong for which the remedy is a common law
action for unliquidated damages.
• The law of torts exists for the purpose of preventing men from hurting one
another, whether in respect of their property, their persons, their reputations,
or anything else which is theirs.
• An action of tort, therefore, is usually a claim for pecuniary compensation in
respect of damage suffered as the result of the invasion of a legally protected
interest.
• To succeed, the plaintiff has to establish that:
- he has suffered some harm or injury;
- and that the defendant has infringed or violated a legal right of the
plaintiff.

23. The Law
of Tort
Nuisance
• Nuisance may be described as interference with another person’s
enjoyment.
• It is an act or omission, which materially affects the reasonable comfort and
convenience of the other person.
• Nuisances are of two kinds, public and private.
• A private nuisance is a civil wrong.
• A public or common nuisance is a criminal offence.

24. The Law of Tort
Defamation
• The wrong of defamation consists in the
publication of a false and defamatory
statement concerning another person
without lawful justification.
• A defamatory statement is not
necessarily made in words, either written
or spoken.
• A man may defame anther by his acts no
less than by his words.
• The act of placing an effigy of the plaintiff
among those of murderers and other ill-
fames persons in an exhibition is
defamation.

25. The Law of Tort
Libel and Slander
• The wrong of defamation is of two kinds, namely libel and slander.
• In libel, the defamatory statement is made in some permanent and visible
form, such as writing, printing, pictures, or effigies.
• In slander, it is made in spoken words or in some other transitory form,
whether visible or audible, such as gestures or inarticulate but significant
sounds.
• Although libel and slander are for the most part governed by the same
principles, there are two important differences:
• libel is not merely an actionable tort, but also a criminal offence; whereas
slander is a civil injury only.

26. The Law of Tort
Trespass
• It is a wrongful direct interference with another person or with his possession
of land or goods, such as striking a person, entering his land, or taking away his
goods without his consent.
• Trespass is actionable per se, i.e. the act of trespass is itself a tort and it is not
necessary to prove that it has caused actual damage.
• Three kinds of trespass are:
- Trespass to the Person may be intentional or negligent. The action for
trespass to the person is now only brought for intentional acts, in the form
of actions for assault, battery, and false imprisonment.
- Trespass to Goods includes touching, moving, or carrying them away of
another person’s possessions. It may be intentional or negligent.
- Trespass to Land usually takes the form of entering it without permission.

27. The Law of Tort
Negligence
• Carelessness amounting to the culpable breach of a duty: failure to do
something that a reasonable man (i.e. an average responsible citizen) would
do, or doing something that a reasonable a reasonable man would not do.
• Negligence in the sense of carelessness does not give rise to civil liability
unless the defendant’s failure to conform to the standards of the reasonable
man.
Contributory Negligence
• A person’s carelessness for his own safety or interests, which contributes
materially to damage suffered by him as a result partly of his own fault and
partly of the fault of another person or persons.
• Thus careless driving, knowingly traveling with a drunken driver, and failure to
wear a seat belt are common forms of contributory negligence in highway
accidents.

28. The Law
of Tort
Duty of Care
• It is the legal obligation to take reasonable care to avoid causing damage.
• There is a duty to take care in most situations in which one can reasonably
foresee that one’s actions may cause physical damage to the person or property
of others.
• An example is of doctors, who have a duty of care to their patients and users of
the highway have a duty of care to all other road users.

29. The Law of Tort
General Defences in Tort
• Consent is a defence (volenti non-fit injuria) which means, “that to which one
consents cannot be considered an injury”.
• However, such a defence would never be allowed in a criminal charge.
• In other words, a person who consents has no further right to action.
• The consent must expressed or implied, real and therefore must involve
complete abandonment of claims for compensation.
Self-defence
• A defence at common law to charges of offences against the person when
reasonable force is used to defend oneself, or one’s family, or anyone else
against attack or threatened attack.

30. The Law of Tort
Act of God
• An event due to the natural causes (storms, earthquakes, floods, etc.) so
exceptionally severe that no one could reasonably be expected to anticipate or
guard against it.
Necessity
• It can be defined as pressure of circumstance compelling one to commit an
illegal act.
• Necessity is in some circumstances a defence to an action in tort, but it is
probably limited to action taken to protect life or property in an emergency
not caused by the defendant’s negligence.
• The steps taken in the emergency must be reasonable.

31. The Law of Tort
Limitation of Actions (Time Bar)
• Statutory rules limiting the time
within which civil actions can be
brought.
• Actions in simple contract and tort
must be brought within six years of
the accrual of the cause of action (in
the case of contracts, within six years
of the date of the contract).
• In actions in respect of land and of
contracts made by deed, the period is
12 years from the accrual of the
cause of action.
• Time does not run against a party
under a disability until the disability
ceases.

32. The Law of Tort
Vicarious Liability
• Legal liability imposed on one person for torts or crimes committed by
another.
• An employer is vicariously liable for torts committed by his employees when
he has authorized or ratified them or when the tort was committed in the
course of the employees’ work.
• Thus negligent driving by someone employed as a driver is a tort committed in
the course of his employment, but if the driver were to assault a passing
pedestrian for motives of private revenge, the assault would not be connected
with his job and his employer would not be liable.
• The purpose of the doctrine of vicarious liability is to ensure that an employer
pays the costs of damage caused by his business operations.
• His vicarious liability, however, is in addition to the liability of the employee,
who remains personally liable for his own torts.

33. Thank You