Pines members move to take legal action against club owner Exklusiv Resorts

Fri, Mar 02, 2018

Lee Meixian


MEMBERS of The Pines club are looking to start a representative action suit against club owner Exklusiv Resorts and have engaged Derrick Wong & Lim BC LLP to represent them, in what could unfold like the Raffles Town Club case two decades ago.

Representative action is a more simplified version of what other jurisdictions term class action because it offers less extensive protection to plaintiffs.

Lau Kah Hee, a partner at Derrick Wong & Lim, told The Business Times that four club members - Donald Poon, Lau Kau Chin, Paul Phua, Kenneth Liu - have approached him for legal representation over what they believe to have been misrepresentation by the club management.

The Pines management had promised to build new facilities for the members when it closed the club, then located at Stevens Road, for renovation in 2013. Later, property developer Oxley Holdings purchased the estate from Exklusiv Resorts, owned by motoring tycoon Peter Kwee, and built two hotels where the club once stood.

Last October, The Pines management wrote to members to inform them that it had failed to secure a club lease at its Stevens Road site, but will allow members to use the facilities at the Laguna National Golf & Country Club and its upcoming Dusit Thani Laguna Singapore resort near Changi Airport.

The management will also extend the current 30-year membership - due to expire in 2032 - by eight years to 2040. It also agreed to waive transfer and administration fees for members who decide to transfer their membership to the new golf resort in the two years after it opens.

Exklusiv Resorts said it had tried to negotiate with Oxley to keep the club's presence at Stevens Road but was unsuccessful due to factors such as space allocation needs and the financial viability of its operations. About 1,300 members were affected.

This was not an acceptable response to many members of The Pines who had joined the club precisely for its proximity to town. BT understands that it has meanwhile been difficult for members to come together to take a collective action against management because many had lost contact during the five-year closure of the club.

A spokesman from Exklusiv Resorts did not respond by press time.

There have been two precedents of representative action taken by club members in Singapore in recent history.

In the Raffles Town Club case in 2000, some 5,000 members sued the club's shareholders for breach of contract and misrepresentation to them that it was going to be a "prestigious private city club" when in fact the club had 19,000 members. They demanded a refund of their S$28,000 membership fees, and after a lengthy court battle, won the suit in 2005.

In 2009, 202 ex-members of the Sijori Resort Club, represented by seven plaintiffs, sued the club's owner, Treasure Resort. They alleged they had been denied membership privileges after the club was sold by Sijori to Treasure in 2006. The lawsuit was discontinued after the High Court found insufficient commonality of interest or grievance among the class plaintiffs.

Eugene Quah, partner, litigation and dispute resolution, at RHTLaw Taylor Wessing, said that in representative action, the fate of the larger group depends on how well the representative plaintiffs run the case.

"The basic challenge is for the representative plaintiff to represent the entire set of people. The first threshold is that they must have the same interests in the action. That has been extensively examined and interpreted in the Treasure Resort case.

"The representative action is a convenience device, so that the Court is able to decide in one action the same issue faced by, for instance, 1,000 people, and save everyone's time."