Horizon Towers' Majority Owners Win Appeal Against Strata Titles Board

Source : Channel NewsAsia, 11 October 2007

The majority owners of Horizon Towers scored a legal victory on Thursday.

They have won their appeal against the Strata Titles Board (STB).

On August 3, the STB had dismissed their en-bloc sale application because of a technical error. But the High Court on Thursday ruled that the STB must look at the case again.

The High Court judge ruled that the STB had no grounds to dismiss the sale application by the sellers of Horizon Towers.

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Horizon Towers' majority owners win appeal against Strata Titles Board

Justice Choo Han Teck said there was no reason for the STB to deny amendment of a technical error. This was because that error did not affect the minority owners' decision not to sell.

Justice Choo also questioned if the three missing pages from the original application constituted a "defect" in the first place. He added that the STB has a "duty" to hear the sale application based on its merits.

With the appeal being successful, the case has now been returned to the STB. This means that minority owners now have a chance to lay out their objections to the sale.

But consenting owners have until 11 December to obtain a sale order from the STB. This is the deadline under their current contract with buyers Hotel Properties Limited (HPL).

HPL's lawyer K Shanmugam said his client may apply to be included as a party in the STB hearing.

As for the sellers, they said that contrary to HPL's allegations, the Court's verdict showed that they had not breached their contract with HPL.

Lim Seng Hoo, Chairman, Horizon Towers Sales Committee, said: "Now we will go back to STB as soon as we can; we will fully honour the decision of the STB. Whatever they decide, we will follow."

But before that happens, lawyers for the minority owners reminded all parties that their applications have yet to be factored in.

Dr Phang Sin Kat, lawyer for minority owners, said: "We haven't exhausted all our grounds of objections yet; in fact we were barely into the first ground. We'll shoot the other arrows, as it were."

And where those arrows land will be decided when the hearing at STB continues at a date to be fixed. - CNA/ms