A High Court judge will stand down earlier this week after it was discovered he had plagiarized his judgments at least five times over the past three years.
Judge of the Supreme Court Wilson Chan offered to retire at the request of Chief Justice Andrew Cheung. It will come into force on Friday, justice said on monday.
Chan, 64, received a “serious reprimand” last week for committing plagiarism in his trial in a 2024 trial over a company stock dispute. It was at least the third known degree of “judicial copying” after two previous occasions in 2023.
In one STATEMENT On Monday, Chief Justice Cheung said “judicial duplication strikes at the core” of the fundamental requirement that judges adjudicate cases independently.
“A judge must exercise an independent judicial mind in carefully considering and resolving the issues raised and determining disputes before the court,” Cheung said.
“The exercise of independent judicial judgment, which lies at the heart of the judicial process, is mainly reflected in the reasons and judgments given by the judge,” he added.
Cheung said Chan’s plagiarism cases had led to a number of appeals and retrial orders, straining the court’s resources and undermining public confidence in the judiciary.
He warned judges at all levels of Hong Kong courts to avoid any form of judicial copying, adding that training in writing judgments will be strengthened where necessary.
Monday’s announcement means Chan will retire almost six years before he is set to reach retirement age for a Supreme Court justice. Hong Kong Rules changed in 2019 to extend the retirement age of a Supreme Court judge from 65 to 70.
The range of cases
In the latest instance of plagiarism, Chan was found to have copied large parts of the defense’s opening and closing arguments in a HK$40 million stock dispute between Koo Ming-kown, the founder of digital products company Nam Tai Electronics, and Koo’s former brother-in-law.
Koo initially lost the case, but won an appeal this month, with the Court of Appeal finding that 95 percent of Chan’s ruling was plagiarized. The case was ordered to be retried before a different judge.
Chan, who presided over the early proceedings of the 47 the Democrats’ national security issuehas been caught red-handed at least four times before.
The Court of Appeal found that Chan had plagiarized on two separate occasions in 2025, according to for local media The Witness.
In 2023, he was also found to have copied most of the plaintiff’s written submission in his decision after the defendant filed an appeal in a trademark dispute case involving two pharmaceutical brands.
Çani was also that year it is found that he plagiarized in a case involving real estate giant Great Eagle Holdings. The defendant, who lost the case, filed an appeal accusing Chan of removing large portions of the plaintiff’s submissions.
In both 2023 incidents, the Court of Appeal ordered the cases to be retried by different judges.
