Final nail put in tycoon's bid to reclaim HK$30m plot from squatters
A developer that lost a HK$30 million plot in Tai Po to a family of squatters was abusing the judicial process by trying to have the law under which it forfeited its title ruled unconstitutional, a judge decided yesterday.
Mr Justice Michael Hartmann said in the Court of First Instance the application for a judicial review, by which Harvest Good Development had sought to have its title reinstated or compensation paid, was abusive and artificial.
The Court of Final Appeal ruled in January last year that Wong Yam-tai and her daughter, Chan Suk-yin, had spent enough time on the land to undo any title to which Harvest Good or its owner - Henderson Land chairman Lee Shau-kee, who acquired the lease to the plot in 1961 - had a claim.
The application for a judicial review was filed the next day.
The company sought to challenge the government's refusal of a demand that it change the law and pay compensation for the loss of its title.
Harvest Good contended that the Limitations Ordinance, under which the title passed to the Wongs once they had occupied the land for a specified period without any formal arrangement with the landlord, breached the Basic Law's protection of private property rights in that it allowed a landholder to be dispossessed without compensation.
