The Court of Final Appeal has put an end to 14 years of litigation aimed at ejecting an old lady and her daughter from a plot of land they won from one of the city's richest men.
Patrick Rattigan, solicitor for Wong Yam-tai, 86, and her daughter Kitty Chan Suk-yin, said the court last month dismissed an appeal from Harvest Good Development, owned by billionaire Lee Shau-kee, chairman of Henderson Land.
It was the second time Mr Lee had gone all the way to the city's highest court in pursuit of the 1.12 hectare block of land, the title to which he bought with friends in 1961.
In January 2006, the court unanimously agreed that Ms Wong had spent enough time on the land to undo any title Mr Lee might have had.
Ms Wong thought that was the end of the long legal fight, which began in 1994 after attempts to eject her had failed, Mr Rattigan said. But the very next day, lawyers for Mr Lee sought a judicial review aimed at overturning sections of the Limitations Ordinance under which it lost the land and named Ms Wong as a defendant - prompting accusations of abuse of process.
Those accusations were echoed by Mr Justice Michael Hartmann in the Court of First Instance, who described the action, which he dismissed, as abusive and artificial.
