Low Heng Leon Andy v Low Kian Beng Lawrence

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Andrew Phang Boon Leong JA,Steven Chong JA
• Judgment Date: 15 August 2018
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Civil Appeal No 93 of 2017
• Date: 15 August 2018

Low Heng Leon Andy

and

Low Kian Beng Lawrence (administrator of the estate of Tan Ah Kng, deceased)

[2018] SGCA 48

Andrew Phang Boon Leong JA and Steven Chong JA

Civil Appeal No 93 of 2017

Court of Appeal

Damages — Assessment — Assessment of equitable compensation — Equity arising in proprietary estoppel claim — Whether court should adopt expectation-based approach or reliance-based approach in assessing appropriate remedy to satisfy equity which had arisen

Equity — Estoppel — Proprietary estoppel — Satisfaction — Achieving proportionality — Doing minimum required to satisfy maximum extent of equity and do justice between parties

Held, allowing the appeal:

(1) The exercise of assessing the appropriate remedy to satisfy the equity that had arisen in a proprietary estoppel claim was an intensely fact-specific one, with the court's exercise of its discretion being ultimately guided by the twin lodestars of achieving proportionality between the expectation, the detriment and the remedy, as well as doing the minimum required to satisfy the maximum extent of the equity and do justice between the parties: at [17].

(2) There were two different approaches towards assessing the appropriate remedy to satisfy the equity that had arisen in a proprietary estoppel claim – one school of thought was that the claimant's expectation should be the starting point of the assessment exercise before the court turned to consider the detriment suffered (ie, the expectation-based approach), while the other was that the claimant's detriment should be the starting point before the court turned to consider the claimant's expectation (ie, the reliance-based approach): at [20], [21] and [24].

(3) However, in the present proceedings, the expectation-based approach was adopted because that was the approach that the Appellant had elected to base his case on, and the AR and the Judge had proceeded throughout on the basis of that approach. It was now too late for the court to take into account the reliance-based approach, not least because the court was bound to consider only the evidence on record: at [27] and [31].

(4) Applying the legal principles to the facts, the court allowed the appeal to the extent that the equitable compensation awarded to the Appellant was increased to a sum of $140,000. In so doing, the court affirmed the methodology employed by the Judge, which was to first identify a suitable multiplicand to be multiplied by a suitable multiplier in order to arrive at an amount that fulfilled the Appellant's expectation, and then consider whether this amount should be reduced to ensure the proportionality of the remedy with the detriment suffered: at [2], [33], [34] and [62].

(5) The amount that would fulfil the Appellant's expectation should have been obtained by multiplying the multiplicand of $1,500 per month by a multiplier of ten years, which would yield a total sum of $180,000. A multiplicand of $1,500 per month was based on the tenancy arrangements for three-room or four-room HDB flats that the Appellant had in fact entered into post-eviction, which were an appropriate proxy for the losses arising out of the Appellant's unmet expectation of living in a furnished flat. A multiplier of ten years took into account both the Appellant's expectation of a life-long licence to occupy the Flat as well as his self-professed intention to reside in the Flat only up till when he would be first eligible to apply for public housing as a single (at the age of 35): at [35], [38], [39], [43] and [45].

(6) The Judge had correctly observed that the detriment suffered by the Appellant had, in certain respects, not been adequately pleaded or proved, having taken into account the feeble state of the evidence adduced in respect of the medical and household expenses that the Appellant claimed to have borne on behalf of the Deceased, and the complete lack of evidence regarding the full-time employment opportunities that the Appellant had allegedly forgone in order to take care of the Deceased on a full-time basis. The Judge also rightly considered the fact that the Appellant had received assistance from a domestic helper when looking after the Aunt and the Deceased: at [49] to [53].

(7) However, the detriment suffered by the Appellant was, on the whole, more significant than what the Judge had assessed it to be. Some value ought to have been ascribed to the non-financial detriment suffered by the Appellant from having to wrestle with the constant fear of contracting tuberculosis and having to sacrifice his social life while taking care of the Deceased: at [48], [54] and [60].

(8) Also, the Judge should not have offset the aforementioned detriment suffered against the rent-free accommodation that the Appellant had enjoyed at the material time. Benefits garnered by the claimant should be taken into account only if acquired as a direct result of the very course of conduct through which the claimant satisfied the reliance element of his claim. The Appellant had been living in the Flat since his birth, and never had to pay for rent to reside in the Flat. Rent-free accommodation in the Flat was thus a benefit that the Appellant had always enjoyed, and was not factually linked to the course of conduct that he undertook in reliance on the Deceased's promise of a life-long licence to occupy the Flat: at [58] and [59].

(9) The provisional figure of $180,000 was out of all proportion to the detriment that the Appellant had suffered, and should be reduced to the sum of $140,000 in order to achieve proportionality between the expectation of the Appellant and his detriment suffered, and ensure that the court did the minimum necessary to satisfy the maximum extent of the equity and do justice between the parties: at [47] and [61].

[Observation: The entire inquiry that the court should undertake in dealing with a claim in proprietary estoppel could be framed in the context of the three questions set out in Crabb v Arun District CouncilELR[1976] Ch 179, which required the court to consider: “First, is there an equity established? Secondly, what is the extent of the equity, if one is established? And thirdly, what is the relief appropriate to satisfy the equity?”. Alternatively, it could also be condensed to a bipartite one of whether an equity had arisen, and, if so, how the court should satisfy this equity: at [25] and [26].

The issue as to whether the court should focus on the expectation-based approach or the reliance-based approach might represent a false dichotomy because this depended, in the final analysis, on the particular choice made by the plaintiff. The legal principles set out at [16] and [17] therefore related to the legal relationship between these two approaches – and not the starting-point that ought to be adopted by the court as such. The starting-point that the court should adopt depended on the choice made by the plaintiff concerned, who then bore the legal burden of adducing the necessary evidence in order to make good his or her case: at [28] to [30].]

Case(s) referred to

C & P Haulage v Middleton [1983] 1 WLR 1461 (refd)

Cobbe v Yeoman's Row Management Ltd [2006] 1 WLR 2964, CA (refd)

Cobbe v Yeoman's Row Management Ltd [2008] 1 WLR 1752, HL (refd)

Commonwealth of Australia v Verwayen (1990) 95 ALR 321 (refd)

Crabb v Arun District Council [1976] Ch 179 (refd)

Davies v Davies [2015] EWHC 1384 (Ch) (refd)

Gillett v Holt [2001] Ch 210 (refd)

Henry v Henry [2010] UKPC 3 (refd)

Jennings v Rice [2003] 1 P & CR 100 (refd)

Jones v Watkins [1987] Lexis Citation 841 (refd)

Lim Chin San Contractors Pte Ltd v Shiok Kim Seng [2013] 2 SLR 279 (folld)

Magrath v Parkside Hotels Ltd [2011] EWHC 143 (Ch) (refd)

Powell v Benney [2007] EWCA Civ 1283 (refd)

Sledmore v Dalby (1996) 72 P & CR 196 (refd)

Southwell v Blackburn [2014] EWCA Civ 1347 (distd)

Suggitt v Suggitt [2012] EWCA Civ 1140 (refd)

Facts

Low Heng Leon Andy (“the Appellant”) had, since his birth in 1984, lived in a five-room Housing Development Board (“HDB”) flat located in Hougang (“the Flat”) until he was evicted by Low Kian Beng Lawrence (“the Respondent”), who was the administrator of the estate (“the Estate”) of his grandmother (“the Deceased”), in July 2009. The Flat was held in joint tenancy by the Deceased and one of the Appellant's aunts (“the Aunt”). The Aunt and the Deceased had previously moved out of the Flat in 1992, but returned to live with the Appellant in 2005. The Aunt passed away in 2007, while the Deceased passed away in 2008. This left the Estate, which the Appellant was not a beneficiary of, as the sole legal and beneficial owner of the Flat.

According to the Appellant, the Deceased had, before her passing, promised the Appellant that the Flat was not to be sold in the event of her demise, and that the Appellant would be free to continue staying in the Flat for as long as he wished. In reliance on the promises made by the Deceased, the Appellant took care of both the Aunt and the Deceased during the entire period from 2005 till their respective deaths in 2007 and 2008, and suffered from various detriments, including: (a) spending time and effort to care for the Aunt and the Deceased, and paying for all of the household and medical expenses for the Deceased; (b) refraining from seeking regular full-time employment in order to take care of the Deceased on a full-time basis; and (c) having to wrestle with the constant fear of contracting tuberculosis and feeling compelled to sacrifice his social life by avoiding social contact while taking care of the tuberculosis-stricken Deceased.

After being evicted in July 2009, the Appellant brought a claim in proprietary estoppel against the Estate, seeking to recover the moneys expended in taking care of the Deceased during her lifetime as well as equitable compensation for the loss of his life-long licence to reside in the Flat. In August 2016, the Appellant obtained an order for interlocutory judgment against...