Hong Kong High Court Judge Reprimanded for Plagiarism Again

A Hong Kong High Court judge previously reprimanded for plagiarism has been found to have done so again, after an appeal court determined that almost 95 per cent of a previous judgment was lifted from the defendant’s counsel.

In a ruling dated July 15, which came to light on Tuesday, a panel of three Court of Appeal judges found that Mr Justice Wilson Chan Ka-shun had engaged in “impermissible judicial copying” in a case he oversaw in 2024.

The original case stemmed from a dispute between Nam Tai Property founder Koo Ming-kown and his former brother-in-law Charles Chu Chia-chin over the sale of shares in Lully Corporation, the parent company of the firm.

Nam Tai Property was formerly known as Nam Tai Electronics.

After Chan ruled in favour of Chu, the defendant in the case, Koo and the three other plaintiffs filed an appeal on the grounds that the judge had copied large swathes of text from the defence counsel’s closing submissions.

The appellate court stated that the question when determining whether a judgment should be impugned for judicial copying is whether a “fair-minded observer” would conclude the judge had brought an “independent mind” to resolve the issue.