A party who has consented to a judgment is not any more deserving of a chance to re-litigate. Here, the High Court followed UK authority and previous Singapore decisions and held that consent judgments can give rise to issue estoppel as long as the judgment is final it need not be a judgment o n the merits. Therefore, can a consent judgment ever give rise to issue estoppel and, if so, what is the precise scope of the estoppel given that no findings would have been made by the court? In a consent judgment, however, there is technically no final and conclusive judgment on the merits of the issues it is essentially just an agreement as to a result of the dispute endorsed by the court. Since the court has already made a determination on an issue, outside of an actual appeal, the „losing‟ party cannot get a second try to obtain a different decision. It prevents the same issues from being reopened or submitted again for decision in subsequent proceedings between the same parties. Issue estoppel operates when an issue of fact or law is n e cessarily decided and concluded in an earlier proceeding.
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If so, whether issue estoppel applies to prevent the Defendant from arguing that “all dividends and profits” does not include unofficial payouts.Whether issue estoppel applies to consent judgments and.The Court thus had to determine the scope of the term “all dividends and profits”. However, the Plaintiff argued that the term “all dividends and profits” should include unofficial payouts as well. In the assessment hearing, the Defendant submitted that no dividends had been declared, and there was thus nothing to account for. At the end of closing submissions, the Defendant agreed to consent judgment, whereby he would transfer 60,000 shares to the Plaintiff and “provide an account to the 1st Plaintiff of all dividends and profits”. The Plaintiff and the Defendant had been involved in a dispute over their respective shareholdings in a company. This was the issue before the Singapore High Court in the case of Cost Engineers (SEA) Pte Ltd v Chan Siew Lun SGHC 262.
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However, the application of this principle is less clear if the earlier proceeding has ended in a consent judgment. Courts seek to impose a degree of finality in their judgments, and so if an issue has been decided in an earlier proceeding, the same parties cannot reopen the issue in subsequent proceedings.