A man from Singapore has filed a $2.3 million lawsuit against a woman who he said caused him trauma when she apparently “friend-zoned” him, The Washington Post reports.
The man in the case has been identified as drone racing executive K. Kawshigan, who filed the lawsuit after she rejected his advances and prompted “sustained trauma” and “reductions in his earning capacity.” The woman is contesting the defamation suit, which will be heard in Singapore’s High Court next week, and previously alleged he filed the suit “for an ulterior purpose” in an effort to get her to “comply with his demands to, among other things, resume communications with him.”
Kawshigan filed a separate case in Singapore’s Magistrate Court last month, but it was struck down due to an alleged abuse of process. The woman’s lawyers have said that Kawshigan was ordered to pay her legal costs in that case, in which he sought approximately $17,000. He said that she breached an “offer” she made to him “offering room for him to share inspiration, struggle, and achievements” and “meeting up based on mutual availability, beyond coffee settings.”
In a statement on the matter, women’s rights and gender equality advocacy group Aware Singapore blasted the lawsuit. “Women do not owe men their time or attention, much less their friendship, love, sexual activity or emotional labor,” read the statement. “Attempting to demand or coerce these things, via legal means or otherwise, can constitute harassment.”
According to the suit, Kawshigan met the woman for the first time in 2016 and they got along fine until September 2020 when “they became misaligned about how they saw their relationship.” While she saw him as a friend, Kawshigan apparently “considered ehr to be his ‘closest friend.’” When she asked to see him less, he got upset and “did not react well.” He threatened legal action just a month later, citing “emotional distress.” She initially agreed to go to counseling sessions with him, but ultimately Kawshigan was “unable to accept her reasons for not wanting any relationship or association with him.”
Singapore Management University associate professor of law Siyuan Chen has argued there’s “probably no merits” to the claims Kawshigan has made.
