Imagine spending millions of dollars in legal fees and waiting months for a High Court judge to resolve a complex business dispute, only to discover that the written ruling is almost entirely copied from the opposing party's legal brief.
That is not a hypothetical scenario. It happened again in Hong Kong's High Court.
High Court Judge Wilson Chan Ka-shun faces another reprimand after the Court of Appeal threw out his decision in a HK$40 million corporate share dispute. Appellate judges found that Chan copied nearly 95 percent of his 2024 judgment directly from the winning side's written submissions.
This isn't his first offense. It isn't even his second. It's his fifth documented instance of judicial copying.
When a senior judge repeatedly copy-pastes legal arguments without doing the hard intellectual work of writing an independent ruling, it's not just a matter of judicial laziness. It strikes at the core of legal fairness.
The Nam Tai Case and the 95 Percent Cut and Paste
The latest scandal involves a high-stakes battle over shares in Nam Tai Electronics. Founder Koo Ming-kown and his sister sued former brother-in-law Charles Chu Chia-chin, claiming Chu held HK$40 million in company shares on trust for them.
Chu argued he had sold the shares back in 1992 to solve financial troubles and that Koo waited 22 years after Chu divorced Koo's sister to raise the claim.
Judge Wilson Chan dismissed Koo's suit and ordered him to pay heavy legal costs. But when Koo's legal team reviewed the written decision, they noticed something shocking. Nearly 95 percent of the paragraphs in Chan's judgment were lifted word-for-word from Chu's opening and closing submissions.
The Court of Appeal didn't mince words. They ruled that Chan failed to demonstrate he had weighed conflicting evidence, analyzed opposing arguments, or independently resolved key facts.
Though both sides wanted to avoid the staggering financial toll of a brand-new trial, the appellate judges ruled that justice hadn't been served. They overturned Chan's ruling completely and ordered a full retrial before a different judge.
A Track Record of Copying Law Firm Briefs
If this were an isolated mistake, it might be chalked up to administrative overload or poor judgment. But Chan's history shows a systematic pattern.
Back in a 2021 trademark dispute involving Wong To Yick Wood Lock Medicated Balm, Chan handed down a ruling that was over 98 percent copied from the plaintiff's submissions. The Court of Appeal pointed out that in the remaining two percent of the document, there wasn't a single full sentence written in Chan's own words. The appellate court ordered a retrial in 2023, warning that wholesale copying destroys public confidence in the courts.
Around the same time, another case surfaced. Lo Kai-shui, the youngest son of late Great Eagle Holdings founder Lo Ying-shek, sued his brother Lo Ka-shui over alleged breaches of fiduciary duty. The Court of Appeal discovered that roughly 92 percent of Chan's judgment in that case was plagiarized from legal filings, prompting the appellate court to strip him of the case.
Chief Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung and Chief Judge Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor previously issued a serious reprimand to Chan. Chan admitted his fault and promised it wouldn't happen again. The judiciary even reassigned his duties, shifting him primarily to criminal cases where written judgments are rarely required.
Yet here we are again. Five cases deep.
Why Judicial Copying Destroys Public Trust
Common law tradition allows judges to adopt arguments put forward by lawyers. That's standard practice. A judge can quote a brief, agree with a specific point, or use a well-crafted summary of facts.
However, wholesale copying is a completely different beast.
When a judge copies 95 percent of one party's brief, several dangerous things happen:
- No proof of independent thinking: The losing party has no way of knowing if the judge actually read their arguments or simply picked a side and copied their homework.
- Ignored evidence: Key arguments and cross-examinations raised during the trial get completely ignored because the judge only pastes the winning side's narrative.
- Massive financial waste: Retrials cost litigants millions of dollars in duplicate legal fees and waste years of court time.
- Erosion of systemic credibility: If litigants believe judges don't exercise independent judgment, they lose faith in the rule of law entirely.
Court rulings aren't student essays where you lose points for bad citations. They're legally binding mandates that alter lives, seize assets, and destroy businesses.
Is Targeted Training Enough
The response from court leadership raises eyebrows. Chief Justice Andrew Cheung and Chief Judge Jeremy Poon plan to issue another serious reprimand and mandate "targeted training" for Chan.
Many legal observers wonder if that goes far enough.
When a judge repeatedly engages in wholesale judicial copying after explicit reprimands and reassignment of duties, reprimands begin to look like soft slap-on-the-wrist administrative gestures. Targeted training teaches a junior clerk how to draft decisions. It shouldn't be necessary for a High Court judge earning a senior government salary.
Hong Kong's judiciary relies heavily on its international reputation for rigor and impartiality. When high-profile commercial disputes end in forced retrials due to judge-level plagiarism, that reputation takes a direct hit.
How Litigants Can Protect Themselves
If you are involved in litigation or commercial disputes in Hong Kong, you can't control which judge gets assigned to your case. But you can take proactive steps to protect your position:
- Audit written judgments immediately: As soon as a judgment is handed down, have your legal team run text-comparison software comparing the ruling against both parties' submissions.
- Document missing arguments: Identify specific factual defenses or counter-arguments your side presented that were entirely omitted from the court's written reasoning.
- File timely appeals on procedural fairness: If judicial copying exceeds acceptable limits, raise the issue early in appellate filings to seek a retrial before a new judge.
- Push for costs orders: Where a retrial is forced due to judicial error, instruct counsel to apply for cost protections to mitigate the financial drain of re-litigating the case.
Track court decisions closely, review legal drafts with extreme care, and demand full transparency from your legal counsel at every stage of appellate review.
