Vin Cheng & Co

On the court record

A civil-procedure and strata-management practice engaging stays of execution, committal for contempt, and the statutory formula for share units under the Strata Management Act 2013 and Strata Titles Act 1985.

Vin Cheng & Co is recorded in the corpus in civil-procedure and strata-management litigation before the High Court. In one matter the firm acted for the plaintiff where a defendant applied, after a full trial, to stay execution of the judgment pending appeal under Order 55 rule 16 and Order 92 of the Rules of Court 2012, the plaintiff having filed applications to amend the judgment; the question was whether there were special circumstances warranting a stay of execution pending appeal. In a second matter the firm again acted for the plaintiff in an application for a committal order under Order 52 rule 4, where leave for committal proceedings had already been granted and the issue was whether the plaintiff had discharged the burden of proving contempt beyond reasonable doubt, the court noting that the plaintiff had not sufficiently particularised the terms of the order said to have been breached. A third matter, in which the firm acted for the defence, concerned strata management: the setting aside of a consent order and the recalculation of share units in accordance with the First Schedule of the Strata Management Act 2013, where it was said that the joint management body had acted ultra vires in recording the consent order and had circumvented the Strata Titles Act 1985 and the National Land Code, and that share units must be subdivided and allocated in accordance with sections 10 and 10A of the Strata Titles Act 1985. Across these matters the firm is recorded engaged with the procedural machinery of enforcement — stays of execution and committal for contempt — and with the increasingly litigated field of strata management, where the precise statutory formula for share units and the powers of a management body frequently determine the dispute. In the committal matter the court emphasised that the plaintiff had not sufficiently particularised the terms of the order said to have been breached, a shortfall that told against proof of contempt to the criminal standard.