Management Corporation Strata Title Plan No 301 v Lee Tat Development Pte Ltd
Judge | Choo Han Teck J |
Judgment Date | 20 October 2009 |
Neutral Citation | [2009] SGHC 234 |
Published date | 23 October 2009 |
Plaintiff Counsel | Sundaresh Menon SC, Edwin Lee Peng Khoon and Looi Ming Ming (Rajah & Tann LLP) |
Year | 2009 |
Citation | [2009] SGHC 234 |
Subject Matter | Civil Procedure |
Defendant Counsel | Tan Cheng Han SC and Ernest Balasubramaniam (Arfat Selvam Alliance LLC) |
Court | High Court (Singapore) |
20 October 2009 |
Judgment reserved. |
Choo Han Teck J:
1 The plaintiff and the defendant have waged a 30-years war over a small strip of land known as Lot 111-31 (“the servient tenement”) over which the plaintiff’s predecessor in title (Hong Leong Holdings Ltd) as well as the defendant’s predecessor in title (Collin Development Pte Ltd) had a common right of way. The plaintiff is the management corporation of the property known as Grange Heights which was built on the land now consolidated as Lot 687 but previously registered separately as Lots 111-30 and 111-34. The right of way was recognised by the court in the first action more than 30 years ago when Collin Development Pte Ltd sued Hong Leong Holdings Ltd to restrain it from using the easement during the construction of Grange Heights. The judgments by FA Chua J at first instance, and on appeal, by Wee Chong Jin CJ, Kulasekaram, and Choor Singh JJ were reported in
Plainly, the plaintiffs’ right of way is derived from or based on the right of way given to them as owners of lot 111-34. The number 111-34 is no longer the lot number for that parcel of land; that number has been extinguished and the parcel of land has become and is a part of a larger parcel of land known as lot 687. However, the land is still there and the right of way which runs with the land remains intact. The amalgamation of lots 111-34 and 561 into one lot known as lot 687 is only for the purposes of survey and issue of documents of title. It does not destroy or extinguish the right of way which runs with the land and enure to the benefit of the owners for the time being of the land. Accordingly, in my judgment, the plaintiffs as owners of the land, formerly known as lot 111-34 but now a part of lot 687, still have the right of way over the servient tenement, and the defendants in erecting the gate and the fence have interfered with the plaintiffs’ right of way. [p1195] |
The defendant’s appeal was dismissed by Yong Pung How CJ, LP Thean and Goh Joon Seng JJ forming the coram in the Court of Appeal whose judgment was reported in
The real point is that for the purposes of this appeal, the correctness of the judgments relied on for issue estoppel is completely irrelevant: see Spencer Bower, Turner and Handley on The Doctrine of Res Judicata (Butterworths, 3rd Ed, 1996) at para 15. Moreover it was not argued and indeed no “special circumstances exception” exists, in the present appeal such as to prevent the operation of issue estoppel: see Arnold v National Westminster Bank Plc [14] supra at 109 per Lord Keith of Kinkel (at p167) |
Chao JA was of the view that there was no issue estoppel concerning the previous action before Coomaraswamy J. It is not necessary to refer to Chao JA’s reasons here because the relevant point was that the decision of Woo J was upheld by the majority — a point that becomes clearer when the narrative of the history leading to the present application is complete. The plaintiff and defendant were back before Woo J in 2007. It seemed that the defendant had let the servient tenement lapse into disrepair after having acquired the land. The plaintiff thus applied to Woo J for an order granting leave for it to repair the servient tenement at its own expense. The application succeeded and in the last paragraph of his judgment reported in
I found this to be an unmeritorious assertion. Lee Tat was aware of the various court decisions in the First Action/1974 [Chua J’s judgment] and the Second Action/1989 [Coomaraswamy J’s judgment] before it purchased lot 111-31 on 17 January 1997. |
The defendant appealed once again to the Court of Appeal, this time to reverse Woo J’s decision granting the plaintiff the right to repair the servient tenement. An unanimous decision of Chan Sek Keong CJ, Andrew Phang Boon Leong, and V K Rajah JJA allowed the defendant’s appeal and further held that the residents of Grange Heights would no longer have the right of way to gain access to and egress from lot 561 and vice versa. The judgment of Chan CJ was handed down on 1 December 2008 on behalf of the Court of Appeal was reported in
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