 In part 1, I chronicled the court sessions prior to the hearing before the judge. January 16 finally rolled around. I slept very little the night before, tossing and turning with thoughts of the case churning in my head. Because of the stress, I had a large zit develop overnight. Early in the process, Stuart and I had resolved to fight her every step of the way. We’d spent every weekend working on our defence, rebutting each and every accusation she’d uploaded into the portal. We had no clue what this session would entail. But we made an educated guess that it wouldn’t be over in one session based on our previous experience with the assistant magistrate via the Zoom before, witnessing how Catherine (our ex-landlord) managed to drag things out. Preparing for the session, we had to wear business formal attire and prepared drinks we could reach for on the table. Logging into Zoom via the details provided by the court in the web portal, we waited for a while before the session with the judge started. Again, the judge didn’t introduce himself, just like the assistant magistrate we dealt with previously for the document collection process. We called him “sir” and “your honour” to be safe. Catherine started the session by saying she had emailed the judge a document last night and asked him to look at it to “help him” with the case today. I gripped Stuart’s hand. Was this allowed? If this was new information, will we get a chance to rebut? The judge replied that he was not allowed to read that document at this late minute, as that could unfairly sway the outcome the day. We breathed a quiet sigh of relief. At this point, I could hear and feel my heart pounding strongly and feel the strain coursing through my veins. This was the fight or flight system working full time. The judge then took our oaths. Not that this prevented anyone in history from lying through their teeth, as Catherine would proceed to do for each and every court session. The judge verbalised some rules, such as no eating, and speaking slowly and clearly. The session is being recorded, but we the claimants and respondents are not allowed to record. We were asked to create “hearing bundles” from all the documents we submitted prior to this session. This would be the repository from which we can refer to when presenting our case. Interestingly, we could have had witnesses, but since we were not told this beforehand, we didn’t have anyone.  Catherine is shocked there is a limit to the Small Claims Court The judge then proceeded to look into Catherine’s counter claim. Unbeknownst to all parties, the cap for a small claim was $20k, not $30k, like Stuart and I had assumed. Catherine had made a counter claim of $60k. The claim could have gone up to $30k, but that required both parties to agree. It is unlikely that claimants would have agreed to raising it to $30k, as it’s not in the claimants’ interest. He now gave Catherine an opportunity to either stick to this court, with its $20k limit, or take this to a civil court. She had to pick and choose from all the items she’d listed as damaged so that they would amount to $20k or less. She would be given a deadline to file a civil suit, or the case would be returned to this small claims court. She now had the power. She took a while to even understand what the judge had now said to her and requested some time to process it. Patiently, the judge showed a lot of compassion and repeated what he said to us twice. Finally accepting the limitation, she again requested to take 15 minutes to discuss this with her husband. Returning online, she still didn’t have the list of items that would amount to $20k or less. She asked the judge if this issue could be mediated. We were puzzled. What did she think we were doing here? If she were open to mediation, why did she threaten us with claims of police reports so that we would give up our deposit? The judge then asked her if she could possibly speak with us directly to resolve the situation. She admitted that she couldn’t. We couldn’t either, to be truthful, after all that she had alleged. She received another 10 minutes to adjourn and discuss with her husband. Coming back online, she still hasn’t given up. She questioned this requirement of the court to limit the counter claim amount and disagreed with the judge. He calmly disagreed with her. What world was she living in? In that world, do judges simply make things up just to mess with defendants? He again asked her to state what items she was claiming for within $20k. She again hedged and they went back and forth for the next 15 minutes. Finally, after another 10 minutes, she acquiesced and opened a document that was a quotation, of which she could refer to to pick the items she wanted to make up $20k. She spent a further 10 minutes browsing through her quotations. The judge had to prod her to ask if she was done picking. After more back and forth, she started using a calculator for this task. She used another 20 minutes to do this. The judge called for a break. Returning to Zoom, we watched as she listed the items she’d picked for the claim amounting to less than $20k. We noted down the items and the amounts claimed. The judge then asked about the handover process [insert link]. I had prepared a document detailing how the handover went, while she had not. She boldfaced lied when she claimed that Stuart and I left the handover for 45 minutes. She was setting up her other lie, where she claimed she made a police report that I’d scratched her car during the handover. I’d left the house for a few minutes to fetch a big bottle of water from our car and saw her husband loitering around our car near a neighbour and introducing himself to that neighbour. I thought nothing of it at that time. Her husband must have seen me observing his actions, and decided to claim that I’d “scratched” their car. She produced “evidence” of photos of her car with small nicks. Of course, we noted that the metadata showed the photos were taken days after the handover. She wasn’t very good at manufacturing ‘evidence”. The police have never visited us after she made her “police reports”. The judge wanted to know why her husband went to the handover to try and accost me. Months ago, during one of the viewings, Catherine’s husband, Bob, turned up and Stuart asked for some identification as he wanted to enter the property we were still living in. She had tried to foist her husband on Stuart to deal with our various complaints about the auto-gate and oven not working; good-cop, bad-cop routine. Bob, a rather large man, turned up at the handover pretending I was a stranger and demanded to know who I was. This is retaliation for Stuart asking him for his identification during the viewing aforementioned. It was a completely futile, childish and aggressive move to intimidate us, as by that time, they would have already decided to keep our deposit. Catherine explained to the judge that it was completely normal for her to do handovers with her husband present. Even the judge didn’t buy it, as he expressed his doubts that that was a normal thing to do by real estate agents (Catherine is one). With all of us exhausted by her antics at this point, the judge called for an adjournment of 1.5 hours for lunch.  "Where's the crack?" We didn’t have much of an appetite, knowing we had a stressful afternoon ahead. Once again making sure we have drinks on hand, we put on our jackets before entering the Zoom meeting. We were not surprised when Catherine had something to say immediately. She proceeded to argue that we, the claimants had to prove that we left the house in good condition upon handover, and that she had her own interpretation of fair wear and tear. To do that, she presented two case laws, both from the UK, from decades ago. The judge was not convinced they were relevant, and stated that the onus is on her to prove damage was done to the house. This is similar to having a friend claim there was a leprechaun in their backyard. You would say, “What? Do you have a photo?” The burden of proof is always with the person making the claim that something exists. Moving on, with Catherine telling the judge he didn’t know how to do his job, the judge tried to go into the first of ten points up for judgement within the $20k purview of the court. She took another 15 minutes to find the documents required, understandably, since she’d uploaded hundreds of documents. Finally, we started with the first item, which was about the functioning of the auto-gate. She claimed without evidence that we’d cut the wires to the gate, that because we’d hung the national flag on it for the National Day celebrations, that caused the gate to fail. Stuart disagreed, with him explaining to the judge that the system was over 20 years old, as related to us by the gate maintenance company. Because of aging wires and water leakage into the system due to the rain, it was prone to failure. We’d done our part in maintaining it. The maintenance of the tree [insert link] was up next. We went back and forth on it, but ultimately the judge gave her another chance to produce photos to show the height of the tree. Next, she brought up the issue of a weed called Balsam. It had grown on the boundary wall adjoining the neighbour, and it was something we had missed, as it was hidden by the banana trees. Right in the beginning, we’d offered to pay for the removal of the plant. For Catherine however, it was letting us off the hook by us just paying for the removal of the plant. Her accusation was that the wall was cracked as a result of this plant growing, and we’d have to compensate for repairing the crack caused by the roots. She presented various pictures of the plant and how it was removed by a worker. We were relieved when the judge kept asking her where the damage was. At one point, he said, “Where’s the crack? I’ve zoomed in 45 times and I still can’t see the crack.” Up next was the issue of the zinc fence located on the other side of the boundary wall. The bottom of the fence had rotted during the lease due to rain and corrosion. It was however, Catherine’s claim that the rot had caused cracks in the wall. Again, the judge raised the problem that he could not see any damage to the wall. Just a few minutes past 5 pm, the judge decided to adjourn the case to March 14. Before we ended, we were non-plussed when she again tried to change his mind on what fair wear and tear is. Clearly, she’d sensed he wasn’t buying what she was selling. The judge patiently pushed back again and tried to close the day. Undeterred, she chimed in one last time, asking to present evidence for the other items not covered by the $20k of ten items. He declined her request and finally managed to close the proceedings of the day.  Saddlebag bugs and skimpy attire March 14 rolled around and we once again prepared for the Zoom hearing that would start at 9.30 am. We had a better idea now what to expect during the hearings, so mentally we were more resilient, but Stuart still slept badly. We braced ourselves for what’s to come. Taking our oaths once again, the judge then proceeded to ask whether we’d received the CD of photos with metadata that Catherine had promised to mail. We confirmed that we had. The first issue today was the cleaning of the place before the handover. She made claims that the wooden fence of this “heritage home” was destroyed by the jet spray cleaning. Stuart and I struggled to remain composed. The house looks very similar to many semi-detached houses in Singapore, but by no means was it a “heritage home”. Does the National Heritage Board know they’ve missed putting this house on the “heritage homes” list? The judged asked if at any point she asked for the house to be cleaned again since she’d been very unsatisfied with the results. He also noted that at no point during the handover [insert link] did she bring up the issue of cleanliness. She also claimed that the house was 4000 square feet and that what we paid the cleaning company couldn’t have possibly covered the entire house. We replied that while all the floors and the grounds may be close to 4000, the house itself was only slightly more than 2000 square feet. Helpfully, she offered to show the judge two bags under her desk – one of dog fur missed by the cleaning company, and one containing “saddle bag bugs”. The judge asked what saddle bag bugs were. She showed him photos of lizard poop still stuck on the wall, missed by the cleaning company. We again struggled to contain our mirth. There are no such things as saddle bag bugs; she made it up to sound “upper class”. Gentile ladies certainly didn’t use words like “poop”. Wisely, he declined to see the bags. She did show pictures of the gate looking worse for wear, and we disputed that, since we knew the gate’s white paintwork was in terrible condition due to rain and pollution. She tried again to tell the judge how to do his job, that we had to show it was clean. The judge reminded her again that the onus of the burden of proof was on her, if it was her claim that the gate was damaged. Up next was the issue of the broken gutter on the edge of the roof. Her claim was that we didn’t maintain the gutter, while our argument is that it was wear and tear. We’d never noticed it until she produced a photo of it in tatters, metadated many weeks after the handover. The judge also asked when the gutter was installed, and she wasn’t sure. The question now is, is the gutter’s damage our fault? Catherine then chose to show a photo of me walking on the treadmill in the living room, a photo that she took while she was showing the house to potential tenants after we declined to renew the lease. Carrying on for a while, the judge said, “I’m giving you one minute to make your point.” She asked, “Why was she on the treadmill?” The judge enquired as well. This was the first time I’d been asked a question during the hearing and I relished the chance to state my case. Firstly, it doesn’t say in the tenancy agreement that we cannot live normally, including exercising, during a viewing. Were we supposed to twiddle our thumbs during a viewing? Secondly, it was unreasonable to expect tenants to put a sheet of plastic under every piece of furniture. The judge agreed with me. Failing to win her point, she went low: “Look at her skimpy attire. Are those the appropriate shoes to wear?” If she thought that comment would swing the judge’s view of me in her favour, she was sorely mistaken. It simply demonstrated how small of a person she is. Perhaps trying to build on that momentum of insulting me, she once again tried to tell the judge about what wear and tear is. Once again, the judge firmly shut that down. We broke for lunch just before 1 pm and returned at 2.30 pm.  You don’t know how to do your job, judge The first thing on Catherine’s agenda was presenting two case laws. The judge allowed it even though he’d commented that they were not relevant before. The first one presented was from 1959 in the UK, and the other one was from 1928. The judge disagreed that they were relevant. Not giving up, she presented another one from Singapore from decades ago. In this case, she was making the point that the burden of proof was on Stuart and I to proof we didn’t damage the house. Failing to convince him, she made a 10-minute garrulous speech about how she’s been wronged by us, and how she doesn’t think going item by item is fair on her. After this rant, we returned to the issue to the broken gutter, as the judge had asked her to produce photos taken during the handover, presumably because she tried to attribute the damage to us. The only photos she had were taken many weeks after the handover, which were not convincing in the least. There was another trick up her sleeve however. She proceeded to tell the judge that her husband had dengue fever, and that’s why she was so concerned about the gutter. This is a bewildering argument, because if the gutter was indeed broken, then there would be NO water ponding, i.e. no mosquito breeding. What was her complaint exactly? We then moved on to a really deep and wide scratch in her photo taken many weeks after the handover. The judge made us smirk internally when he said, “It looks like a dinosaur made this scratch.” We argued that damaged that happened after we’ve handed over the house shouldn’t be our responsibility. He agreed. Moving on the to issue of the parquet floor, she claimed that our dog scratched the floor and that we didn’t have permission to keep a dog in the house. We demonstrated to the judge how on two occasions prior to signing the tenancy agreement we mentioned the dog. Catherine chose to ignore that and signed with us anyway. Mildy irritated by the mention of the dog again, he declared, “Please, no more about the dog.” This was clearly a non-issue for him. He asked for more evidence of work done on the floor before we moved in. We spent a lot of time looking at her “evidence”, while ultimately, she didn’t produce any receipt for the work done on the floor. We adjourned for 5 minutes. Returning to the Zoom hearing, the judge further delved into the question of the flooring, and she tried to explain why she took the highest of three quotes to claim against us. Dog odour was the last item of the day. Her claim was that the house smelled of dog, that people had commented to her about the odour. We reminded the judge that at no point during the 3-hour handover did she mention an odour, nor does she have a meter reading from an odourmeter. Before concluding for the day close to 5 pm, the judge asked her to produce a receipt for the work done on the floor before the next and final hearing. He also indicated that a judgement will be made to conclude the case.  Pre-final hearing submissions A few days before the final hearing, Catherine uploaded a “receipt” that the judge had requested for. Suffice to say a child could have created this receipt. It came from a typical receipt book you can buy in a stationery shop. There was no receipt number and no company name, nor the name of the person who issued it. We thought it was apparent the “receipt” was made up by Catherine and scanned. We also uploaded before and after photos of the same scratches on the parquet floor to show that if indeed she had the floor worked on, why did those scratches remain exactly the same before we moved in and after we moved out?  Judgement day We had just returned from a holiday the day before, so we were fully rested, only for the stress to come roaring back the moment we woke up. The judge was slightly late but went straight into the previous issue of the parquet floor, requesting for Catherine to produce the receipt. It all went downhill from here. Her first argument was that Stuart and I shouldn’t be allowed to upload any documents, even though she had done so. She didn’t like that we were able to comment on her “receipt”, and claimed that she was not allowed to upload documents. The judge did not let that go, and stated that she’d literally uploaded hundreds of documents in the portal, so her claim was false. Irrelevantly, she brought up the attic and the stairs, and the fact that parts of the house was renovated. We’ve never disputed some work was done. What was her point exactly? It was like she was living in an alternate reality where the house she handed over to us was pristine, spotless and flawless. In reality, the house was far from perfect, and we experienced it pretty soon after we moved in. Bizarrely, she brought up the dog again, claiming that the dog was responsible for all the scratches. Lots of time was spent looking at her photos, trying to identify the photo of the room we were disputing and failing to, and her asking the judge to look at this “holistically”. We finally moved on to the oven, where her claim was that it was faulty when handed over back to her, and that it was new and working when it was handed over to us. This is another doozy. In the history of the world, no home appliance had ever broken down over time? In what world does that make sense? We used the oven almost everyday, and we got it repaired by the original appliance maker one week before handing it back to her in working condition. In fact, Stuart asked her to touch the metal rack if she didn’t believe it was hot. She declined at that time. Because the onus is on the person making the claim to produce evidence, the judge asked her for evidence that the oven wasn’t working. She could not produce any. Finally, we’ve reached the last item – the aircon. Her first claim was that she didn’t allow her to have the original copies of the servicing receipts. We did allow her to take photos of them. That, according to her, was evidence of use forging the receipts. The reason that’s strange is because she took photos of the original, so she saw the original receipts with blue ink, signatures and descriptions of the service provided. Even the judge expressed doubt that such receipts would be forged. Her next claim was that the aircon pump was dirty and that it wasn’t cleaned by the aircon men. Since this stipulation was not in the tenancy agreement, we didn’t service it. Her final claim was that because the price of the servicing package was reasonably priced, we’d forged the servicing. The judge also questioned the price of the package. I explained that I was a long time customer, so I received a preferential rate. In fact, I had right at the beginning asked for three quotes from three different companies, and the other more expensive package was only $100 more. With this, the judge announced that we were to adjourn for lunch, and when we returned, he would deliver this judgement.  “A miscarriage of justice” We all returned at 2.30 pm, only to have the judge request for more time to write up his verdict. We were to return at 3.30 pm. A little anti-climatic to say the least. He was an additional 13 minutes late again when he started the Zoom session again. He started by summarizing the case with dates and numbers, read out again the clause from the TA where it stated that the deposit is to be returned to tenants and the fair wear and tear clause, reiterated that the onus is on Catherine to prove damage, and brought up the case laws that she presented, concluding that they were not relevant to this case. Interestingly, he referred to a document that I had uploaded, where I detailed what happened during the handover and the fact that Stuart and I never signed off on her notes. He ran through each item in dispute and awarded her for 5 out of 10 items. Ultimately, we still got 89% of our deposit back. Stuart and I could barely contain our glee. But we still had to maintain our composure until the close of the Zoom session. Notably, he said, “I’m not that interested in having a conversation about the judgement.” The judge asked when she could transfer the money, adding that he typically gave people three days to make the transfer and what method of transfer she preferred – bank transfer or Paynow? He added that Paynow was easier. You would be mistaken if you’d think she had admitted defeat. Till now, she was silent, with a blank expression. “I need a moment,” she said to the judge. “Can I have 5 minutes?” He granted her that, but not a minute more, when he asked again which method of payment she preferred. She replied that she would use bank transfer and the judge asked if she had Stuart’s account number, and added that he had the number in front of him if she needed it. The judge asked if we had any questions, and Stuart asked what the process was for enforcing the payment. He replied that the information was available online. Catherine chimed in at this point to say, “I’m quite perturbed that many items had been dismissed”, and that she was forced to choose only 10 items out of her $60k claim, cited the case laws again, that Stuart and I had cut the wires of the auto-gate (insert eyeroll), that we had destroyed the house, and this was a “miscarriage of justice”. Responding to this tiring tirade, he said he is not reversing his decision and that he does not engage with people who claims he is unfair. He also commented on her accusations that he forced her to pick and choose the items, disagreeing with it, that she was given the opportunity to pursue this in a civil court, and that he gave her plenty of time to discuss with her husband and that ultimately, she chose this forum. “I’m not interested in engaging about whether I am unfair,” was his final comment. With no more questions, he closed the session. I imagined the bang of the gavel.  A surreal and bewildering case
No one was more surprised than Stuart and I when on the third and final day, the money arrived in Stuart’s account at 10 pm. Throughout the third day, I went through the court’s website to find out the exact process for enforcing a judgement. We were convinced she wasn’t going to admit defeat, since she truly believed in her alternate reality that her house was destroyed. She could also have appealed. Luckily, the judge was quite insistent that she pay up, and she obeyed, for some reason. In the following few days, we still found it hard to believe this nightmare was over. We had fought this case for 8 hard months, and now we have our weekends back again, free to do whatever we want. It was a little surreal. These days, we have a little laugh about the case occasionally, but we wouldn’t wish Catherine on our worst enemy. *All names have been changed
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