High Court holds in Deepak Mishra v Rashmi Bothra [2026] SGHC(A) 17 that the presence of certain illegal transactions within a running account is insufficient to render the entire account unenforceable.

The Appellants argued that the illegality of specific transactions (LC Discount Trades) tainted the entire running account, making it unenforceable. The Court rejected this, holding that a claim for a running account balance requires determining the validity of each individual transaction, and the Appellants failed to provide authority for the principle that illegal transactions materially taint an otherwise indivisible account.

Why it mattersLitigants cannot rely on the illegality of isolated transactions to invalidate an entire running account unless they can establish that the illegality permeates the whole account.