Ex-lover of ‘Shoe King’ wins back Tai Kok Tsui property
Tycoon's message to former mistress about home was 'lost in translation' at earlier hearing
A judge who did not understand Chinese was wrong to declare "King of Shoes" Patrick Tang Kim-kwan the owner of a flat he bought for a former mistress, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday.
Karen Lee Chi-ting, 43, successfully argued that Tang's true intentions when he gave her the flat in Tai Kok Tsui had been "lost in translation" when the case came before the Court of First Instance.
Yesterday's ruling means Lee will keep the HK$2.1 million she made from selling the flat, bought for her by the billionaire head of the ATG Sourcing empire for HK$1.71 million in 2003.
The ruling centred on a phrase Tang said to Lee. He told her, in Chinese, he was giving her the flat "to hold on to". Anthony Houghton SC, who presided over the case as a deputy judge, considered the phrase equivocal and ruled that it was not clear Tang had intended the flat to be a gift.
But in a written judgment, Mr Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung said the term was generally understood to give the recipient "security" and "control".
"In my view, all in all, that the property was intended to be a gift and understood to be so is the more natural and proper inference to be drawn, once the meaning of the actual Chinese words used is fully appreciated," Cheung wrote. He added that 'to hold on to' was "as good a translation as any for the Chinese words used. But in this court, we have the advantage of working on the original Chinese words."