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SINGAPORE – Anti-vaccine group founder, Iris Koh, and her husband appeared in the High Court on July 15 after the Attorney-General\u2019s Chambers (AGC) sought to have them declared as vexatious litigants.<\/p>\n
A vexatious litigant is someone who habitually, persistently, and without reasonable grounds initiates legal proceedings, typically to harass opponents or abuse the court process.<\/p>\n
The AGC had filed an application to require Koh, founder of\u00a0Healing\u00a0the\u00a0Divide, and her husband, Raymond Ng, to seek the court\u2019s permission before commencing new civil proceedings or continuing with existing civil suits.<\/p>\n
Addressing Justice Hoo Sheau Peng on July 15, AGC\u2019s head of advocacy group, Vincent Leow, said it was clear the couple viewed commencing civil litigation on others as an instant recourse.<\/p>\n
Said Leow: \u201cThe moment they feel aggrieved, their instinct is to sue.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added the couple had a habit of filing multiple lawsuits against various individuals and entities, and raising funds through crowdfunding to pay for legal fees.<\/p>\n
Leow said: \u201cI urge Your Honour to look at this holistically. Crowdfunding the costs for one court case does not make a person a vexatious litigant. But each time they file (a lawsuit), they file it without basis.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they\u2019re found to have abused the court process, their crowdfunding pays it off, and they use the money to improve their artificial intelligence (AI) processes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ng had previously announced he had developed an AI system for the sole purpose of suing people for defamation.<\/p>\n
He posted on his website about\u00a0using the AI system to sue\u00a0thousands without\u00a0hiring\u00a0lawyers, saying it was like unleashing a legal whirlwind.<\/p>\n
Calling the couple\u2019s litigating actions a \u201cbusiness model of warfare\u201d, Leow added: \u201cMy point is that if you\u2019re appropriating litigation to terrorise and raise funds, and using that as a business model, I believe that is an abuse of court process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leow raised several civil proceedings he said were vexatiously initiated by the couple to prove they had abused the court process.<\/p>\n
One of them included a judicial review application against the Health Sciences Authority (HSA)<\/span><\/a>, which the couple sought a mandatory order to make HSA investigate and, if necessary, prosecute entities using celebrities to advertise Covid-19 vaccination.<\/p>\n In that case, Koh and Ng were found to have abused court process and\u00a0ordered to pay $12,000 in costs.<\/p>\n Leow separately raised a coroner\u2019s report on how a woman died by suicide<\/span><\/a> in September 2024 after coming under financial stress, in part because she was dealing with two defamation lawsuits initiated against her by Ng.<\/p>\n The coroner\u2019s report showed that Geno Ong Kay Yong, 46, wrote in a note and on a Facebook post that she was committing suicide in part due to the escalating legal costs she was facing after Ng initiated two lawsuits against her.<\/p>\n A senior investigation officer in charge of the case had said Ong\u2019s total legal fees were between $55,000 and $65,000.<\/p>\n Ng is represented by lawyer Daniel Koh of Eldan Law, while Koh is represented by lawyer Nicholas Jeyaraj Narayanan of Nicholas & Tan Partnership.<\/p>\n Ng\u2019s lawyer opposed the AGC\u2019s application, and said: \u201cIf someone were to rear-end my client\u2019s car tomorrow, can he not initiate proceedings against the person who hit his car?\u201d<\/p>\n He noted how Ng has been on the receiving end of many attacks on social media, adding: \u201cAs much as AGC is putting him out as a villain, my client is, in truth, a victim.\u201d<\/p>\n Ng\u2019s lawyer also highlighted the significant delay his client would have to face should he need to seek the court\u2019s permission before initiating any legal proceedings, if the AGC\u2019s application were to be granted.<\/p>\n The hearing was adjourned for lunch, with both Ng\u2019s and Koh\u2019s lawyers expected to address the court after the break.<\/p>\n Ng currently has a case before the State Courts after being accused of cheating six individuals of around $25,000 in total by deceiving them into believing they would be acquiring co-ownership of coffee vending machines<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n He is on trial after denying all six cheating charges levied against him by the prosecution. The next pre-trial conference for his case is on Aug 7.<\/p>\n Koh is involved in a separate trial over Covid-19 vaccines, including being part of a conspiracy to make false representations<\/span><\/a> to the Health Promotion Board.<\/p>\n She was among a group who allegedly made false representations to the Ministry of Health between 2021 and 2022 that several individuals had been given the Sinopharm vaccine, when they had not. They were said to have done so to each obtain a certificate of vaccination against Covid-19.<\/p>\n Koh\u2019s case is fixed for a pre-trial conference on July 27.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE – Anti-vaccine group founder, Iris Koh, and her husband appeared in the High Court on July 15 after the Attorney-General\u2019s Chambers (AGC) sought to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=68889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68889\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/68890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=68889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=68889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=68889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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