SIR Yuet-keung Kan is a man with considerable credit in the ledger of respectability. He is a former Executive, Legislative and Urban Councillor, ex-chairman of the Trade Development Council, the Consumer Council and the Bank of East Asia; the first pro-Chancellor of the Chinese University; Hong Kong's first Knight of the Grand Cross and the holder of scores of overseas honours and awards.
But last week, his distinguished record of public service meant little as he had to watch relatives do battle with each other in a court case which, he was telling friends last week, he knew nothing about until his son told him at the last minute.
His daughter-in-law, Joyce Kan, and her two brothers, Ian and Joseph Fung, took five of their uncles to court to force the sale of nearly $400 million worth of property in Central and Kennedy Town.
The buildings were owned by her father Fung Kam-chung and his brothers, who jointly ran the Che San paper business. When he died in 1988, his share was divided between Mrs Kan and her brothers.
The arrangement was hardly made before it began to be the subject of an increasingly bitter dispute about the management of the properties. Supported by her brothers, her mother and the children of another uncle who had died, Joyce Kan began to press the other uncles to sell the land.
The plaintiffs accused the uncles of sloppy and archaic business practices and of subsidising their ailing paper firm through the value of the 14-storey Che San building in Pottinger Street, worth $360 million.