A Singaporean man has lost a court case to claw back hundreds of thousands of dollars that he had lavished on his ex-girlfriend while they were together.<\/p>\n
The S$468,000 ($369,200; \u00a3273,260) that Chander Agarwal attempted to recover from Felicia Lee was money he had “willingly” spent on her, the Singapore High Court ruled.<\/p>\n
Agarwal “displayed a consistent pattern of showering [Lee] with lavish gifts” even before they got together and would reassure her that he did not expect repayment, Senior Judge Lee Seiu Kin said.<\/p>\n
Agarwal, the CEO of a logistics company, met Felicia Lee, a former flight attendant, during a flight in 2019. They were in a romantic relationship from September 2022 to December 2023, the court heard.<\/p>\n
Their relationship fell apart after Agarwal suspected Lee of having an affair. <\/p>\n
Agarwal, who launched the suit in March 2024, argued that Lee had “requested various interest-free loans” from him over the course of their relationship.<\/p>\n
He claimed that these included S$206,000 in credit card charges, S$129,000 for overseas trips, S$17,000 to engage a fengshui master for her apartment, and S$20,000 to pay for her life insurance premiums.<\/p>\n
Lee argued that these were “gifts made out of love and affection” and not loans.<\/p>\n
In agreeing with Lee, the judge noted that Agarwal’s case lacked documentary evidence – for instance, he could not produce any proof that Lee had acknowledged receipt of the loans that she had allegedly requested.<\/p>\n
“The evidence before me clearly shows that the claimant, smitten by the defendant, had showered her with expensive gifts during their relationship,” the judge said.<\/p>\n
“Unfortunately, when their relationship ended on a sour note, [Agarwal] became embittered and was determined to extract a price from her.”<\/p>\n
The judge also noted that Agarwal was “clearly a man of ample means who has expensive tastes”, in contrast to Lee “who was not in that league”.<\/p>\n
In many text messages Lee had “expressed her awe when [Agarwal] suggested expensive gifts, and on occasion, her spontaneous reluctance to accept them”, the judge noted.<\/p>\n
In concluding his written judgement, the judge cited English playwright William Congreve, who wrote in his tragedy satire The Mourning Bride: “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”<\/p>\n
“This case shows that such emotion is not the sole province of one gender,” he said.<\/p>\n
In early 2023, another Singaporean man had filed two lawsuits \u2013 in claims amounting to over S$3m – against a woman who rejected his romantic advances.<\/p>\n
K Kawshigan claimed that Nora Tan’s rejection brought him emotional trauma and caused damage to his reputation. <\/p>\n
The Singapore courts struck out his suits. Tan later counter-sued Kawshigan to claim back expenses she said she had incurred while defending herself from his alleged harassment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Singaporean man has lost a court case to claw back hundreds of thousands of dollars that he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}