Court rules that lawyer, pap mp alvin yeo overcharged $1 million in legal fees

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

source: http://therealsingapore.com/content/...ion-legal-fees


Post date:
1 Oct 2014 - 9:21pm

PAP MP and lawyer Alvin Yeo has been found to have overcharged his client by over $1 million in legal fees in a case involving the Singapore Medical Council and a Doctor.

The courts found that Yeo’s law firm, Wong Partnership LLP, had initially charged a total of $1.33 million in legal fees but after the cost was disputed, it was brought down to $370,000.

Subsequently, during another hearing on the cost, the total price was brought down to $317,000.

This means that the team of lawyers, Senior Counsel Alvin Yeo and Lawyers Melanie Ho and Lim Wei Lee, had overcharged by over $1 million.

The court hearing the case said that the charges were “exorbitant” and “questionable”.

Initially, Alvin Yeo and his team were representing the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) in a case against Medical Doctor Susan Lim who had been accused of overcharging a patient of hers.

The court in that case ruled in favour of the SMC and ordered that Dr Susan Lim pay for costs to SMC which included their legal fees.

Subsequently, Wong Partnership LLC issued their statement of charges to SMC who passed the bill on to Dr Susan Lim but Dr Lim was shocked when she noticed the ridiculous fees charged by SMC’s lawyers.

On one of the statements, they charged $77,102 for each day in court. In another, the fee was $46,729 for every day in court and on the last statement, the fees were close to $100,000 for every hour they spent in court.

Dr Lim filed to have the bills reviewed in a taxation hearing, a process designed for such disputes were the losing party questions to fees of the winning party's legal fees.

The first taxation hearing agreed with Dr Lim that the fees were ridiculous and had them changed to $340,000. However, Alvin and Melanie disputed the taxation hearing’s decision and on appeal to the high court, were able to get the fees raised to $370,000.

However, the courts now have reduced the final amount to only $317,000 meaning that PAP MP Alvin Yeo and his law firm had unethically charged exorbitant fees, overcharging their clients by over $1 million.

It seems that Alvin Yeo is yet another greedy, super rich elite within the PAP parliamentary team. Do you think that someone who feels no moral objection to overcharging his clients by $1 million will ever understand the struggles of regular Singaporeans?


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