A man in Singapore sued a woman named Ms Nora Tan for $3m who rejected him, claiming that she caused emotional trauma to his life. The man, Mr K. Kawshigan, filed his lawsuit after Nora told him she wasn’t interested in a romantic relationship with him, according to the Singapore-based newspaper The Straits Times. Kawshigan claims he sustained trauma and reductions in his earning capacity because of this.
After she cut off contact with him, he filed two lawsuits against Nora. A $3 million High Court claim for allegedly causing trauma, depression and impacts on his life and damage to his stellar reputation, and a $22,000 magistrate’s court claim for allegedly breaching an agreement to improve their relationship. The legal action was kept at bay after she agreed to participate in his counselling, but almost 1½ years later, Mr K. Kawshigan still could not accept that Ms Nora Tan did not want to be in a relationship with him.
The State Courts deputy registrar Lewis Tan struck out the latter suit earlier in January. He said Mr Kawshigan’s claim was “manifestly groundless and without foundation” and amounted to an abuse of the court process.
In the judgment published on Saturday, Mr Tan said “Considered in totality, I find that the claimant intentionally initiated the present action with the ulterior motive of vexing or oppressing the defendant by requiring her to defend various claims that fundamentally stem from the same factual matrix in different forums.” “This court will not be an accessory to his calculated attempt to compel engagement from the defendant who, after years of massaging the claimant’s unhappiness, has finally decided to stand up to his threats rather than cower and give in to his demands,” he added.
According to the reports Ms Nora and Mr Kawshigan met in 2016 and became good friends. But in September 2020, problems began to arise when the two became misaligned in how they saw their relationship. While Nora regarded Kawshigan only as a good friend, he considered her to be his closest friend and wanted to be in a relationship with her.
Seeing this Nora asked for their conversations and meetings to be reduced. This displeased Mr Kawshigan, as he felt it constituted taking a step back in their relationship. She saw the need for boundaries and urged him to be self-reliant.
On Oct 22 that same year, Kawshigan issued her a letter of demand, threatening legal action for ‘monetary damages arising from negligent infliction of emotional distress and possible defamation’. After receiving the letter Nora tried to reason with Kawshigan. She told him in a text message that her ‘discomfort was genuine’. Kawshigan responded by saying she could either comply with his demands to deepen their relationship or suffer irrevocable damage to her professional and personal endeavours. After one and a half years, Tan stopped the sessions as she felt they had become futile. In April 2022, Nora started harassment proceedings against Kawshigan.
After a lot of discussions on the steps to be taken to better align their relationship, on May 14 Nora decided to cease communications as she felt she could no longer deal with his requests for increased interaction and his inability to respect her personal boundaries.
On July 7, Kawshigan filed a High Court claim against her claiming that he suffered a loss in earning capacity and business partnerships, as well as costs incurred in rehabilitation and therapy programmes to overcome the trauma he suffered. Ms Nora then obtained an expedited protection order against him and engaged lawyers to file her defence and counterclaim to the suit.
