1. ) APLI BIN YUSOFF 2. ) HAJI ABDUL RAHMAN BIN MAT YASIN 3. ) RAMLEE BIN SAIDIN 4. ) SINCERE PROGRESS SDN BHD v 1. ) Abdul Malik Bin Dasthigeer 2. ) Siadali Bin Mohd Abu Bakkar

Case Significance

Applies the statutory presumption under the Specific Relief Act 1950 that a breach of a contract for the sale of immovable property cannot be adequately remedied by damages: unless the presumption is displaced, specific performance is the appropriate remedy, and the court here affirmed a decree of specific performance in the purchasers' favour.

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur, delivered by Judge Leong Wai Hong, is an appeal from the Sessions Court concerning the specific performance of an agreement for the sale of immovable property. The respondents, the plaintiffs below, had obtained judgment against the appellants — three individuals and a company, Sincere Progress Sdn Bhd — in a suit seeking to enforce the sale agreement, and the appellants challenged that outcome on appeal. The central question was whether specific performance was the appropriate remedy, or whether the plaintiffs should be confined to damages.

The court affirmed the decision below in the plaintiffs' favour. Restating the settled principles on specific performance, it emphasised that the subject matter was a contract for the sale of immovable property, the kind of obligation that statute, under the Specific Relief Act 1950, rebuttably presumes cannot be adequately remedied by an award of monetary compensation. It noted that a court of equity is amply empowered to decree specific performance on terms, and that there is precedent for granting such a decree while leaving it to a defendant to apply later to have the decree vacated on the ground of impossibility of performance. Applying section 11 of the Specific Relief Act 1950, the court was satisfied that the presumption in favour of specific performance had not been displaced on the facts and that the Sessions Court had been right to grant that relief. It accordingly dismissed the appeal, affirmed the order for specific performance in favour of the plaintiffs, and ordered each party to bear its own costs here and below. In doing so the court observed that a defendant faced with a decree of specific performance is not without recourse, since it may later apply to have the decree vacated should performance prove genuinely impossible — a flexibility that answers the objection that the remedy is too blunt to accommodate later changes of circumstance. The judgment is a useful application of the statutory presumption under the Specific Relief Act 1950 that damages are an inadequate remedy for breach of a contract to sell land.