Jack Chia-MPH Ltd v Malayan Credit Ltd

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Wee Chong Jin CJ
• Judgment Date: 19 April 1984
• Neutral Citation: [1984] SGCA 8
• Date: 19 April 1984
• Subject Matter: Land,Civil Procedure,Exercise of court's powers in ordering sale,when court may order of sale of property,Judgments and orders,Joint tenancy,First Sch para 3 Supreme Court of Judicature Act (Cap 15),Sale of land,Application for equal partition or sale,Equal partition or sale,Sale under court order
• Docket Number: Civil Appeal No 93 of 1982
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Defendant Counsel: M Karthigesu (Cooma Lau Loh & Karthigesu)
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Plaintiff Counsel: Harry Elias and Tan Joo Seng (Allen & Gledhill)

On 30 November 1979 United Overseas Land Ltd granted a lease of the seventh floor of a building known as Malayan Credit House to Jack Chia-MPH Ltd and Malayan Credit Ltd. The lease was for a term of five years at the monthly rent of $7,696 and the monthly service charge of $2,960 with an option to the lessees for two further terms of two years and three respectively. No words were added in the grant to indicate that the leases were to take separate interests. The law is well settled that by this lease Jack Chia-MPH Ltd (the appellant company) and Malayan Credit Ltd (the respondent company), became joint tenants and that each had an identical interest in the whole land and every part of it. The interest of each was the same in extent, nature and duration and this being a leasehold interest, the possession was vested in both, none holding any part to the exclusion of the other and the interest of each vested at the same time. They had unity of title, interest, possession and time (see 32 Halsbury`s Laws of England (3rd Ed) para 517).

Under Singapore law a joint tenancy can be severed at law so as to create a tenancy in common. This was the position in England before the Law of Property Act 1925 (15 Geo 5 e 20). In Williams v Hensman (1861) 1 John & H 546; 50 ER 862 Sir W Page Wood VC at p 557 said:

A joint tenancy may be severed in three ways: in the first place, an act of any one of the persons interested operating upon his own share may create a severance as to that share. The right of each joint-tenant is a right by survivorship only in the event of no severance having taken place of the share which is claimed under the jus accrescendi. Each one is at liberty to dispose of his own interest in such manner as to sever it from the joint fund - losing, of course, at the same time, his own right of survivorship. Secondly, a joint tenancy may be severed by mutual agreement. And, in the third place, there may be a severance by any course of dealing sufficient to intimate that the interests of all were mutually treated as constituting a tenancy in common. When the severance depends on an inference of this kind without any express act of severance, it will not suffice to rely on an intention, with respect to the particular share, declared only behind the backs of the other persons interested.

On the facts which were not in dispute in this case, only the last of the three ways enunciated by VC Page-Wood was relevant.

The...