Kowloon Tong luxury flat owners lose bid to jointly sue developer

Owners of luxury flats in Kowloon Tong who are trying to sue the developer for shoddy work suffered a setback after the Court of Appeal ruled they could not act jointly and struck out their claim.

The HK$27 million lawsuit was brought via Incorporated Owners of One Beacon Hill, which represents all the owners of the 604 flats on the eight-year-old estate. However, the court ruled yesterday that only the original buyers who had a contract with the developers could sue as a collective.

That meant that the Incorporated Owners as a whole have no standing to sue Match Power Investment - a subsidiary of Cheung Kong (Holdings) - under the Building Management Ordinance on behalf of the rights of individual owners.

The judgment overturned a decision by newly retired judge Justice Anselmo Reyes of the Court of First Instance, who said the suit, which concerned the quality of workmanship in the Kowloon Tong estate's common areas, was in the common interest of all the owners.

However, Appeal Court judges Andrew Cheung Kui-nung, Johnson Lam Man-hon and Aarif Barma, decided in favour of the developer, saying there was no common interest "in the sense of a legal right common to all of the co-owners involved".

Referring to some owners who did not sign a contract of consent with the developer, Cheung wrote in the judgment: "They will be in effect, forced to fund the litigation and run the risk of losing it via the IO."