NEWS: Help Jeanne Ten Fund Court Challenge Against NUS for Wrongful Denial of Master Degree.

Left to Right: Dan De Costa, Khush Chopra, Jeanne Ten, and Kieran James, Joo Chiat Road, May 2019.

Dear friends,

Legal Battle with NUS – For the past 14 years, I have fought a tough battle against the National University of Singapore for the wrongful denial of my Master’s Degree. In 2012, I sued the university as a last resort. I am now trying to raise $20,000 for Security for Costs so that my lawsuit can be heard in the Court of Appeal.

Two years ago, donations from the public enabled me to pay a portion of the $11,000 of court hearing fee and send my case to trial instead of being thrown out by Court. I am now trying to raise $20,000 for Security for Costs so that my lawsuit can be heard in the Court of Appeal.

To recap, here below is a brief summary of the past 14 years in which I had fought a tough battle against the National University of Singapore for wrongfully denying my MA degree, the sabotage of my PhD programme that I was then enrolled in in 2006, which cost me loss of career opportunities and loss of income. NUS destroyed my career.

In September 2006, NUS (National University of Singapore) expelled me from the university after refusing to confer me my Master of Arts Degree in retaliation for my whistle-blowing about misconduct by a professor at NUS, and my whistle-blowing about the subsequent cover-up. As a result of this expulsion by NUS, I had to leave a PhD course that I had already started in the United States. This destroyed my chances of pursuing a career in my field of expertise.

In August 2012, I was left with no other option except to turn to the courts to sue NUS, after two different NUS university presidents and the Ministry of Education all failed to help me despite my desperate appeals for help. If I didn’t start the lawsuit against NUS by August 2012, my case would have been “time-barred” which means that I would have passed the deadline to take legal action.

NUS should have properly admitted its guilt, offered to make amends to me, and punished the wrongdoers. Instead, NUS spent more than $700,000 of public funds to hire lawyers to fight me every step of the way and protect the wrongdoers from the punishment they deserved. NUS fiercely resisted discovery of relevant documents, thereby dragging out the lawsuit and making it very costly for me. NUS could afford to use these attrition tactics against me, because NUS can use public funds (taxpayers’ dollars) to fight me in court. I ran out of money half-way through this lawsuit and had to resort to borrowing. NUS even tried to apply to Court to bankrupt me in 2015.

In July 2017, I went public to raise funds for my legal fees after NUS successfully got the Court to issue me two ultimatums (Unless Orders) – to pay $11,000 within three days, failing which my legal case would be thrown out of court. By borrowing money and crowdfunding, I was able to raise the funds to send the case to trial.

In August 2017, the public trial of my case began in the High Court. The trial spanned a total of nine days from August 2017 to November 2017. I blogged about my 9-day trial and legal updates here.

In July 2018, the Court delivered its decision – I lost all my legal claims against NUS. This was despite the High Court finding that NUS was guilty of wrongdoing against me (see the quotations from the High Court’s written judgment below).

On 26 July 2019, the Court delivered its decision on costs – the High Court ordered me to pay $169,748.77 to NUS for the lawsuit (excluding “interlocutory” matters). NUS originally claimed $698,940.11 in legal costs and disbursements for the lawsuit (excluding “interlocutory” matters). This means that NUS claims that it spent at least $698,940.11 paying its lawyers from Drew & Napier to fight me in Court. Since NUS is a “public body” this money must have come from the taxpayers’ dollars.

I don’t know whether if NUS will appeal the cost award, given that the Court has awarded NUS less than a quarter of what NUS has claimed that it had spent in legal costs. Both sides have until 26 August 2019 to file a “Notice of Appeal.” NUS may also choose to bankrupt me as NUS has tried once in 2015 to enforce the cost orders made by Court. This is what NUS does to a student who has refused to allow NUS to cover up misconduct of one of its faculty members against the student.

Having considered the matter thoroughly, I have decided to appeal the High Court’s decision on costs, as well as the High Court’s substantive judgment, to the Court of Appeal; but the problem is that, in Singapore, if you want to appeal to the Court of Appeal, you have to pay $20,000 for “Security for Costs.” If you can’t afford to pay the $20,000, then the Court will not allow you to appeal. The Security for Costs is for the opposing party, which is NUS in my case, and the Security for Costs is separate from the thousands of dollars of court filing fees to be paid to the Court.

As far as I know, the Malaysian Court and the British Courts do not require (or require only minimal amounts for) this sort of security deposit. However, this is, sadly, the current position in Singapore.

Now, in August 2019, I am resorting to crowdfunding again to raise $20,000 Security for Costs which is for the benefit of NUS, before the Court of Appeal would accept my application to hear my appeal.

At the present moment, I have about 2 weeks to raise the $20,000 to appeal the Court’s decisions. I believe I have an arguable case, in fact a strong case, but I don’t have the sum of $20,000. I need to reach the target sum by 22 August 2019 (and file the Notice of Appeal latest by 26 August 2019).

Appealing to the Court of Appeal is probably the only way that I can avoid bankruptcy – or, at the very least, it is certainly the only way that I can possibly avoid a crushing financial burden in the form of the unfair costs order.

Why do I want to appeal?

Some people have asked me to give up taking NUS to the courts because they feel that I can never win a lawsuit against a Singapore public/government institution in Singapore. However, I will still go ahead with the appeal because I believe I have a strong case before the Court of Appeal.

The High Court judgment has already exposed and confirmed wrongdoing by NUS officers.

In the July 2018 written judgment, the High Court actually found NUS to be guilty of wrongdoing in the main facts of my case. (See the elaboration on this point in the next section below.) But the High Court did not find NUS to be guilty of “malice” or “deliberate” acts and, hence, the High Court did not hold NUS liable to me for expelling me from the university and destroying my career, despite the overwhelming documentary evidence that proves that the wrongful actions that NUS took against me were intentional, deliberate, premediated and carefully planned and executed by numerous high-ranking NUS officers.

In my case against NUS, NUS has consistently taken the legal position that I did not complete the requirements that were necessary for NUS to award me my Master’s degree. This is a lame excuse and a red herring. The fact is that I had successfully completed all of the requirements for my graduation and for the award of my Master’s Degree, including researching and writing a book-length Master’s thesis, and I had submitted the final version of my thesis to NUS on the deadline stipulated by NUS. The documentary evidence of letters and internal emails written by NUS officers, clearly prove that the real reason why NUS expelled me and denied me the award of my Master’s degree, was that I refused to comply with demands that I drop my complaints about a professor’s misconduct (my thesis Supervisor), even after NUS sent me a letter that threatened me with expulsion if I refused to comply with the improper demands.

On 13 May 2019, during the court hearing on Costs, the lawyer for NUS, in trying to convince the High Court judge to order me to pay NUS even more costs, told the judge that NUS had made an offer to me to award me my Master’s degree in 2017. (Refer to an extract of the Court Transcript recorded on 13 May 2019 below.)

In other words, NUS has finally (in effect) admitted in Court in 2019 that it had withheld my MA degree despite the fact that I had already earned the degree in 2006!

The High Court judgment appears to be that what NUS did to me is wrongful but NUS is not legally liable to me in the eyes of the law. With all due respect to the High Court, this is absolutely absurd. I will try to ask the Court of Appeal to reverse the costs order. The actions of NUS are “disgraceful” and deserving of “moral condemnation.”

I filed my Notice of Appeal to appeal the High Court’s judgment to the Court of Appeal on 8 August 2018, which was before the deadline; but, the Court has unjustly denied me my legal right to appeal, despite the fact that the right to appeal is supposedly a legal right that belongs to every Singaporean. The Court denied me my legal right to appeal on the grounds that I was unable to pay the $20,000 for “Security for Costs” for the appeal. Now that the High Court has issued a decision on costs, I have another opportunity to be heard by the Court of Appeal, but first I have to raise the $20,000 for “Security for Costs” before the deadline.

Your donation will help me to ask the Court of Appeal to hear my appeal of the High Court’s judgment, amongst other issues including the issue on costs.

Please donate generously to my crowdfunding appeal, so that my case can be heard in the Court of Appeal. Thank you.

For those of you who are still interested in the details of my case after reading this far, you can continue reading on my blog.

Please donate to my crowdfunding appeal.

Paypal tljvnus@gmail.com; PayLah! 93884036; Bank POSB Everyday Savings Account 193-69702-0; Ten Leu Jiun Jeanne-Marie, DBS Bank Pte Ltd, 12 Marina Boulevard, DBS Asia Central, Marina Bay Financial Centre Tower 3, Singapore 018982, Singapore; Bank swift code: DBSSSGSG; Branch code: 081.
Credit Card: https://gogetfunding.com/final-push-to-obtain-justice-urgent-appeal-for-funds-to-get-to-the-court-of-appeal-2/