http://www.straitstimes.com/archive/...-sale-20150325

Two Gilstead Court owners file appeal over collective sale

Published on Mar 25, 2015 2:38 AM


TWO minority owners at Gilstead Court in Newton have appealed against a High Court decision that backed the $150.2 million collective sale of the condominium.

The owners, who are being represented by Stamford Law Corporation director Adrian Tan, want the Court of Appeal to look at part of the decision by High Court Judge Quentin Loh last month that gave the sale the green light.

The sales agreement imposed financial penalties on five owners who had objected to the sale.

One of these penalties said they had to pay twice the contributions made by consenting owners towards a common fund set up for costs related to selling en bloc.

They were also required to pay an extra $135,000 for Strata Titles Board proceedings related to the sale.

The case ended up in the High Court after mediation efforts with the Strata Titles Board broke down.

Justice Loh had said that dissenting owners have "basic rights" to object to the collective sale and were not bound by terms of the agreement as they were never signatories.

He had said: "This cannot be right. Otherwise, a majority can embark on an ill-advised collective sale and yet call upon to detractors to contribute to the costs thereof."

Though it would have been "simpler and neater" to refuse the sale, he had added that it would not have been in the interests of the majority owners to do so, given the "present state" of the property market.

The decision to let the sale proceed, though more tedious than scrapping it, was "the fair one", he said then.

CHERYL ONG