She turned down six months' pay to sue her employer. The court watched the CCTV
A Singapore security officer who walked away from a work injury payout to sue her employer for negligence lost her case on 25 May 2026 before District Judge Evans Ng, who dismissed the action after finding her case had not established any breach of duty.
The claimant, Mdm Nirmala d/o Thangavellu, was deployed by Acestes Pte. Ltd., referred to in the judgment as APL, as a security officer at a condominium along Fernvale Road. On 4 August 2021, at around 7pm, she rolled her right ankle near the loading bay. She said in her affidavit that a delivery cyclist had ignored her, ridden through a gap beside the entry arm, and that she had to give chase on uneven ground.
A WICA claim followed. The Commissioner for Labour assessed compensation at a sum the judge described as more than six months of her then-salary. Mdm Nirmala filed a notice of objection citing "Settlement under WICA is insufficient", then more than a year later instructed Whitefield Law Corporation and counsel from R Kalamohan Law LLC to file an originating claim in negligence against APL. By that point she was time-barred from resuming the WICA claim under sections 41(4) and 63(6) of the Act, a risk the judgment flagged at the outset: an unsuccessful claimant in that position, the court noted, "could end up empty-handed and be liable to pay costs of the unsuccessful action".
The operations manager called by APL, Mr Haresh s/o Syed Ismail, testified to the company's standard operating procedures. Deliverymen were to state their purpose, show a valid unit address, and register their particulars before entry. If a deliveryman did not comply, the officer was to alert a supervisor. Officers, he said, were not authorised or expected to chase. Her own affidavit was materially consistent, recording that "security officers could deny these [deliverymen] access and request their immediate departure".
The decisive evidence was a 27-second video clip of CCTV footage from the loading bay, disclosed in December 2024. Replayed several times at trial, it showed the claimant walking at an unhurried pace, halting, turning, and on her sixth step rolling her ankle. The judge noted her gait was "smooth and unremarkable" and that nowhere in her written or oral evidence did she use the word "run" or anything similar.
Her counsel did not put any specific act or omission to Mr Haresh during cross-examination. Closing submissions did not allege any breach of duty either. Her evidence on breach was confined to a line that "proper safeguards and support were not put in place to prevent such accidents", without particulars. The ground she described as uneven was, on her own account, a cement flooring she said was flat and smooth but a little up and down because she was chasing and coming back, with her shoe perhaps slipping on the slightly uneven floor.
The judge found that her lawyers simply did not attempt to prove that APL breached its duty of care, and dismissed the action. He described the suit as "wholly meritless litigation" and observed that one may wonder why she submitted her notice of objection at all. On re-examination she said the objection had been read out to her by "office personnel at Tekka" who "asked me to sign and I just signed it". Costs submissions were ordered within 14 days unless parties agreed.
Citing Mookan Sadaiyakumar v Kim Hock Corp Pte Ltd and another appeal [2020] 4 SLR 555, the judgment recorded that solicitors owe a duty to weigh the pros and cons of a WICA claim against a common law claim and should only advise litigation where a prima facie case in negligence is made out.
The judgment highlights that standard operating procedures should be clearly evidenced where they are relevant to alleged risks, and that employees pursuing negligence claims instead of WICA compensation must be able to show evidence of breach of duty.
