TIN YING SIN AND OTHERS v. TIN KA PING AND ANOTHER

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JUDGMENT

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Fuad, V.-P. (giving the judgment of the Court):

1. Three applicants, of which Madam TSAO Chin-lan was the most active, sought leave under O.52 of the Rules of Court, ex parte as the Rules require, to apply for an order of committal against a gentleman called Mr. TIN Ka-ping. Madam Tsao, who appeared before Deputy Judge Jerome Chan in person, as she has done before us, based her application on the failure, as she said, of Mr. TIN Ka-ping to obey an order made by Liu J. in High Court Action No.MP 3607 of 1990.

2. The main complaint she made related to that part of Liu J.'s order which required Mr. TIN Ka-paing and the other defendants to do everything necessary to authorize and enable the plaintiffs?solicitors to pay over a sum of money (some $6 million) which was on deposit in a bank to the Registrar of the Supreme Court. The object of the order was that the Registrar would look after the money while it bore interest and then Madam Tsao, who is the natural mother of two infants who brought the action I have mentioned by their next friend, could apply to the Registrar for the payment out of sums from time to time from the interest bearing accounts for the maintenance and education of the two boys.

3. The Deputy Judge refused leave on the date of the hearing, the 26th of June 1991, and gave his reasons in writing for so doing on the 2nd of July. As was Madam Tsao's right under 0.52 r.2 (5) she appealed to this Court within the 10 days allowed by the Rules. Naturally when this appeal was called on for hearing we were anxious to know what had happened to the money. Madam Tsao told us that on 3rd July she had been informed that the money which had been on deposit in the bank in Mr. Tin's name had been paid over, intact, to the Registrar. One of the matters she mentioned in the statement which accompanied her application for leave was her anxiety that some of the money might have been used up by him. It has transpires that her fears were unjustified.

4. We have carefully read all the affidavits that were tiled in this matter, and considered the reasons given by the learned Deputy Judge for refusing to grant leave. We have not been persuaded that he was wrong. Even if the judge had peen in error, in the circumstances that now obtain, since the money is safe under the Registrar's control and none of it has been used up unlawfully, it would be an entirely sterile exercise for us to grant leave for the matter to be gone into further.

5. Madam Tsao recognizes that everything is now in order but insists that she should be given leave because Liu J.'s order was not obeyed when it should have been, pointing out that when she filed her appeal she was fully justified in seeking to reverse the Deputy Judge's order. Committal for contempt in civil matters is an extraordinary jurisdiction which must be exercised with great care and caution, and only when such an order would be clearly appropriate.

6. We dismiss this appeal.