International Construction Law Review
BOOK REVIEW
Commonwealth Construction Cases: The Singapore Perspective.
By Philip C F Chan. Sweet & Maxwell Asia. 2002. 253 pp. ISBN 981-04-6421-5. Hardback. Price £110.
Not all doctoral theses make good books. Philip Chan’s adaptation of his University of London Ph D thesis (of which this reviewer, in the interests of transparency, should identify himself as external examiner) is more successful than many. That this is so is not very surprising. Dr Chan, an academic at the National University of Singapore, is one of Singapore’s leading authorities on construction law; he has also acquired practical experience, including a spell at the Singapore International Arbitration Centre. In addition, the guidance of Ian Duncan Wallace, QC, properly acknowledged in the Preface, has undoubtedly contributed to the breadth of coverage across the various Commonwealth jurisdictions.
The merits of this book are considerable. It highlights, more purposefully perhaps than any text so far published, even including Hudson, Keating and Duncan Wallace’s Construction Contracts: Principles and Policies in Tort and Contract
, the cross-jurisdictional influences which have served to form construction law in Commonwealth countries. Having acknowledged this strength, issue must be taken with a most surprising explanation, advanced in the Preface, of “the inconsistency in the development of the law in different countries”. Chan attributes this to “lack of access to case reports from different jurisdictions”. This, if true, would be a severe condemnation of legal systems in general and legal practitioners in particular. Surely the real explanation is that enunciated in the Privy Council by Lord Lloyd of Berwick in Invercargill City Council
v. Hamlin
[1996] AC 624 that: “The ability of the common law to adapt itself to the differing circumstances of the countries in which it has taken root, is not a weakness, but one of its greatest strengths.”
Indeed, Singapore itself is an excellent example of a system which has chosen individual directions in construction law and Chan’s book successfully reflects them. Thus in the chapter on Consultants’ Responsibilities, the special statutory regime which governs building control responsibilities is well summarised. The reformed version of the building control regime, instituted after the disastrous Hotel New World collapse, was itself the product of inter-jurisdictional thinking, following studies by appointed experts of the systems in Hong Kong, Germany, the UK and Australia, amongst others. The preference of the Singapore courts as exemplified in the Court of Appeal decision in RSP Architects Planners & Engineers
v. Management Corporation Strata Title Plan No 1075
[1999] 2 SLR 449, to follow the law on economic loss in negligence cases developed in Australia, New Zealand and Canada rather than that of England, is analysed in Chapter 2.
Pt 2]
Book Review
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