Ng Chiu Yuen Jacob v. Lam Che Cheung

CACV 242/1998

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF APPEAL

CIVIL APPEAL NO. 242 OF 1998

(On appeal from Lands Tribunal Application No. NT 153 of 1998)

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J U D G M E N T

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Godfrey, J.A. (giving the judgment of the court) :

Introduction

1. This is an appeal by a tenant dissatisfied with the Lands Tribunal's determination, of the rent of his residential premises, arrived at under the material provisions of the Landlord and Tenant (Consolidation) Ordinance, Cap. 7. Under section 119 K of that Ordinance, the Tribunal has power to determine the rent to be paid under a new tenancy granted by order of the Tribunal.

The proceedings below

2. In the present case, after hearing the landlord and the tenant, the Tribunal, on 14 August 1998, determined that the rent for the subject premises should be $5,050 per month under a new two-year tenancy effective from 1 August 1998 (the subject premises being Flat H, 6th Floor, Block 3, Locwood Court, Phase I, Kingswood Villa, Tin Tsui Wai, Yuen Long, New Territories).

3. The tenant was dissatisfied with that and applied, as he was entitled to do under the provisions of the Ordinance, for a review, which was duly held; but on 11 September 1998, the Tribunal refused to vary its decision and the application for review was dismissed accordingly.

The appeal to this court

4. The tenant complains that, before the Tribunal, the landlord relied on data supplied by a property agency which was fabricated or misleading; in effect, not to put too fine a point on it, he says the landlord obtained the decision of the Lands Tribunal by fraud. The tenant also complains that the Tribunal did not properly evaluate the evidence before it as to the domestic appliances provided at the subject premises and comparable premises and points to a number of factors in the evidence which suggests that it might have been open to the Tribunal to take a different view of the matter on this issue. Finally, the tenant says that the landlord placed a letter before the Tribunal which contained defamatory matter, the effect of which was to dispose the Tribunal unfavourably towards the case of the tenant. The tenant says that that was manifestly wrong and is a matter for which the landlord ought to be punished.

5. The landlord disputes all these allegations. He adds that, in any case, so far as the data of which the tenant complains is concerned, that data was treated by the Tribunal as unreliable and was not in fact relied on, so that no harm was done to the tenant by the production of that evidence even if it was of questionable character.

Conclusion

6. All these disputes are disputes over matters of fact. Under the Ordinance (section 68A), although any party to proceedings before the Tribunal may appeal to this court, he may do so only on the ground that the Tribunal's determination or order was erroneous in point of law. We are completely unable to discover here any point of law in the matters of which the tenant complains. It was not thought fit by the framers of the legislation to confer a general right of appeal from the Lands Tribunal to the Court of Appeal in disputes between landlord and tenant relating to the determination of the rent of domestic premises, and in the absence of a point of law which can properly be taken before this court, we are powerless to intervene. We have no desire to encourage further litigation between the landlord and the tenant, but we should point out that if the landlord has defamed the tenant, a remedy may be available to the tenant by an action for damages for defamation, and that if the decision of the Tribunal was obtained by fraud, an action would lie to set aside that decision. But these are not matters into which we can go. Although we understand the tenant's grievances, we are entitled to intervene only on points of law; and, as there is no point of law in this case, we are bound to dismiss this appeal.