1 "the Defendant will bear taxed costs of the Plaintiffs' claim and the Defendant's counterclaim which the Plaintiffs are entitled to of this matter to-date" (my emphasis).

2 Hence, he claims that the order for costs should be for costs up to 23 September 1995. I ruled that my order was for costs up to 3 November 1995. Mr Singh for the Defendant as well as Miss Chew for the Plaintiffs made various minor objections and offered suggestions to some of the orders made, and, in the circumstances, it was not reasonable to assume that costs would be fixed as at 23 September 1995 especially when the Defendant gave up the fight midway through the Plaintiffs' case after his counsel failed to break a crucial independent witness. It will be noted that paragraph 5 of the Plaintiffs' letter of offer stated that costs be taxed, but the order I made on 3 November 1995 was for costs to be agreed or taxed. Furthermore, my further order that taxation be deferred till after the inquiry on the account of profits would be otiose and unnecessary if costs should be determined as at 23 September 1995.

3 The Defendant applied by Notice of Motion No. 312 of 1995 for leave to appeal against my orders of 3 November 1995. I heard the application which raised no new grounds or issues. Mr Choong for the Defendant say that his application is made under s 34(2)(b) of the Supreme Court of Judicature Act because the Defendant disagrees with the order of costs.

4 It may be unfortunate that the Plaintiffs' offer of settlement did not say costs as at the date of acceptance, but in the scheme of things under O 22A of the Rules of Supreme Court, a party must accept the offer in the prescribed form. The acceptance by the Defendant in this case was not in the prescribed form. Had he done so he would have been obliged to set out the terms in consecutively numbered paragraphs and the acceptance would be dated the 3 November 1995. The phrase "to-date" in paragraph 5 of the Plaintiffs' offer must be read to mean the date of acceptance and not the date in which the offer was dated as the offeree's acceptance must necessarily mirror this term and the date of the acceptance must be 3 November 1995 and not 23 September 1995. As it turned out, on 3 November 1995 the Defendant's acceptance was not before me although it is not disputed that it was served on the Plaintiffs on that day. I proceeded to record the consent orders after hearing counsel and read out the same to the parties thereafter. In any event, had counsel raised the question of costs of the trial at that stage I would have awarded costs of the trial to the Plaintiffs. I do not think that there is any merit in the Defendant's application under the Notice of Motion and dismissed it with costs fixed at $200. I dismissed the application on two counts. First, that the matter being a consent order is not subject to appeal. Secondly, on the application itself, as it relates entirely on the question of costs, there was nothing in Mr Choong's argument which persuades me that this matter ought to go any further. His argument is a purely technical one, and as I have stated above, neither justice nor the technicalities were in his client's favour.