Terrell AGCJ:

The facts and arguments sufficiently appear from the judgment.

On the 11 March 1939, Haw Par Brothers entered into a contract with the plaintiff (the present appellant) to erect and complete a swimming pool, together with ancillary buildings, at Pasir Panjang. The contract, as is usual, incorporated certain conditions and specifications which were annexed thereto. The drawings and specifications were prepared by AC Lee, an architect, and a member of the defendant firm of Wong & Lee. Paragraph 3 of the conditions provided that a complete copy of the signed drawings and specifications should be furnished by the architect to the contractor, and that the architect should also furnish a copy of any additional drawing which in his opinion might be necessary for the execution of the work.

The specification under the heading 'drawings' amplifies para. 3 of the conditions and provides as follows:

Drawings. The contractor shall be supplied with a copy of the passed plan and one copy of all other detailed plans necessary for the execution and completion of the work by the architect, but all extra copies shall be paid (for) by the contractor.

There is no doubt whatever that on the true construction of these provisions one copy of the plans had to be supplied free. The contractor did in fact ask for an extra copy for which he paid $5 (see Exh. B). It is common ground that the defendants were entitled to this $5 by virtue of the provision in the specification quoted above.

The architects, however, also demanded $500 for the original copy of the reinforced concrete plans, without which the work could not be carried out, and the plaintiff paid the architects the sum of $500 on 18 March 1939. The defendants have not seriously contended either before the District Judge or before the Supreme Court that they had a shadow of justification for the demand of $500 on the construction of the agreement. There were some sort of suggestion in the Court below that such a payment was sanctified by custom, but no evidence in support of any such custom was called. In fact the defendants preferred not to give evidence at all. Their case, to put it bluntly, was that the plaintiff having parted with his $500 could not get it back; and that if he had paid it under a misapprehension of his legal rights, there was no equity to grant him any relief.

Fortunately that is not, in my opinion, the law. It is true that an action will not generally lie to recover back money paid under a mistake in law where both parties are fully cognizant of the facts, but that principle does not apply where, as in the present case, the plaintiff, a Chinese contractor, was ignorant of his legal rights under a series of complicated documents, and where the defendants, who are architects of long standing, must be deemed to have been perfectly well aware of the legal position. As Mellish LJ said in Rogers v. Ingham, 3 Ch Div 351 at p. 357:

But on the other hand I think that, no doubt, as was said by Turner, LJ 'This Court has power (as I feel no doubt that it has) to relieve against mistakes in law as well as against mistakes in fact' (Stone v. Godfrey De GM & G p. 90) that is to say, if there is any equitable ground which makes it, under the particular facts of the case, inequitable that the party who received the money should retain it.

The supplying of plans is of course part of the duties of architects and is covered by their fee, and it is highly inequitable that they should obtain and attempt to retain additional fee from the contractor for something for which they were already paid or entitled to be paid by their employers. It is not too much to say that they improperly took advantage of the plaintiff's ignorance, and in such a case a Court of Equity will grant relief.

The learned District Judge decided against the plaintiff on the sole ground that the defendants were not parties to the contract between the employer and the contractor. With all respect