Yeo Jin Bung v Hongkong and Shanghai Bank (Singapore) Trustee Ltd and Others

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Choor Singh J
• Judgment Date: 07 July 1978
• Neutral Citation: [1978] SGHC 36
• Docket Number: District Court Appeal No 55 of 1976
• Date: 07 July 1978
• Published date: 19 September 2003
• Year: 1978
• Plaintiff Counsel: Kirpal Singh (Kirpal Singh &Co)
• Citation: [1978] SGHC 36
• Defendant Counsel: S Velupillai (Donaldson & Burkinshaw)
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Subject Matter: Rent control -Recovery of possession -Sub-lease for more than one hundred and ten percent of rent paid to landlord -s 15(1)(g) ontrol of Rent Act,Landlord and Tenant

Cur Adv Vult

This was an appeal against the judgment of a district court. The appeal arose from a claim by the plaintiffs for possession of the premises known as 81 Wilkie Road, Singapore.

The defendant became a tenant of the premises before the Japanese occupation of Singapore. The premises are accordingly `rent controlled`. It is a very old two-storied bungalow with a compound and out-houses. The defendant has been a tenant in occupation for some 40 years and during this period has been carrying out repairs, alterations, additions and building new rooms without anybody questioning her because the property belongs to the estate of a deceased person. The defendant occupied only a part of the premises where she lived with her family and she has been sub-letting the remaining rooms at various rents. Some of the rooms were let furnished and others unfurnished. The PUB charges were borne by the defendant and all her subtenants received free water, light and other services. The rooms sublet by the defendant clearly fell into three distinct categories; rooms built by the defendant, rooms let furnished and rooms let unfurnished. And an additional complicating factor was that the defendant provided all PUB services to all her subtenants at her expense.

It was only in 1975 that the trustees of the estate of the deceased decided to recover possession from the defendant, and after the requisite notice to quit, they commenced these proceedings. They claimed that they were not precluded by the provisions of the Control of Rent Act (Cap 266, 1970 Ed) (the Act) from recovering possession by virtue of s 15(1)(g) of the Act. They alleged that the defendant was in breach of that section which provides as follows:

15(1) In the case of all premises such an order or judgment as is referred to in s 14 of this Act may be made in any of the following cases, namely:

(g) where the tenant having sublet the premises or part thereof receives in respect of that subletting, rents (excluding any municipal services paid by the tenant) for any sublet part of the premises in excess of the recoverable rent for that part, or rents which exceed in the aggregate one hundred and ten per cent of the recoverable rent paid by the tenant himself including the apportioned rental or value of any part of the premises retained by the tenant or not sublet by him; ...

The evidence put before the learned district judge showed that the defendant was paying to the plaintiffs a monthly rent of $144 and collecting from her subtenants in respect of rooms let out by her a total sum of about $600 per mensem. The learned district judge after considering all the evidence and the submissions made by both counsel, made an order that the defendant deliver vacant possession to the plaintiffs of `the premises known as 81 Wilkie Road, Singapore`. The defendant appealed against the whole of the decision of the learned district judge.

At the hearing of the appeal before me, I noticed that there were in the judgment of the learned district...