1. ) ANG BEE CHIN 2. ) NG SWEE KIM 3. ) LEE SOO YING 4. ) CHING THONG LOO 5. ) NG LAI HENG 6. ) OOI SHU XIN 7. ) LOW SIEW EAN 8. ) ANG POH HONG 9. ) LEE TEIK MENG 10. ) LEE JIANG HENG 11. ) LIM TENG HO 12. ) KHOR BEE FUNG 13. ) SOON CHOON HOCK 14. ) CHEW GUEK BEE 15. ) ALEXANDER LIM AIK BENG 16. ) LIM YEW WAN AMELIA 17. ) DON SOH SENG HO 18. ) LIM TENG LEONG 19. ) MELVIN ANG WEI JINN 20. ) SEOW GIM SHEN 21. ) LEE KEAN BOON 22. ) NG CHOY YIM 23. ) NG WAI FERNG 24. ) CHEAH GIM SUN 25. ) TEH MEH...

Case Significance

Examines when house purchasers may sue on the statutory Schedule G sale and purchase agreement, and how a full-and-final settlement bars a later challenge to its clauses.

This High Court decision at Penang decided preliminary questions of law and fact, under Order 33 and Order 14A of the Rules of Court 2012, in three consolidated suits brought by a group of 39 house purchasers against a housing developer, Kemuning Setia Sdn Bhd, and a second company, K-Asia Holdings Sdn Bhd. The development, marketed as "98 Greenlane", comprised a scheme of three-storey terrace and semi-detached houses built on freehold land in Georgetown, and was carried out under a developer’s licence and an advertising and sale permit issued under the Housing Development (Control and Licensing) Regulations 1989. The proceedings were consolidated so that questions common to the several purchasers could be answered once, under the preliminary-issue procedure, before the individual claims were resolved. The purchasers’ claims turned on alleged non-compliance with the statutory sale and purchase agreement prescribed by Regulation 11 and Schedule G of those Regulations, and on their entitlement to liquidated ascertained damages for delay. The Court framed the threshold question as whether purchasers could sue for a statutory non-compliance where the requirement is embodied in, and enforced through, the statutory contract itself. On that question the Court answered the purchasers’ framed questions in the affirmative, reasoning that the requirement for compliance is contained in the sale and purchase agreement, so that without the agreement the purchasers would have had no legal capacity to sue under Regulation 11 and Schedule G. The claims nonetheless failed on the merits. The Court found that certain purchasers had accepted payment in full and final settlement of their liquidated-damages entitlement in 2017 and had not challenged the validity of the relevant clauses before signing that settlement, when they could and should have done so. Having answered the preliminary questions, the Court, per Azizan Md Arshad J, dismissed all three suits with costs of RM12,000 subject to allocatur. The judgment is a useful treatment of the interaction between the statutory housing-development regime and a full-and-final settlement of a purchaser’s claim.