Country Garden Danga Bay Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A mixed-development developer litigating common-property defect claims and joinder, a substantial rectification claim over a cable failure, and late-delivery liquidated-damages claims and their limitation up to the Federal Court.

Country Garden Danga Bay Sdn Bhd is a developer of a large mixed development, and it appears in the corpus in litigation over defects in common property, a substantial rectification claim arising from an infrastructure failure, and purchasers' claims for the late delivery of vacant possession. It appears as defendant, appellant and in a watching brief across the High Court and Federal Court.

One strand concerns defects in the common property and who may sue over them. In one matter a joint management body applied to join three parcel proprietors as co-plaintiffs in an existing action against the developer concerning defects in the common property, the court considering whether the proposed plaintiffs were necessary or proper parties and whether common questions of law or fact arose — the machinery by which the owners of a strata scheme and their management body align themselves to pursue a developer over shared defects.

A second strand concerns a substantial rectification claim tied to an infrastructure failure. The developer faced a claim of more than one and a half million ringgit for rectification following the failure of a high-voltage cable, the dispute turning on the terms of a Letter of Award and a denial of liability on the ground of a deviation from the approved route, with the absence of an as-built survey and a conceded lack of coordination among the issues. The third strand is the familiar late-delivery question: at the Federal Court, in a matter in which the developer's interests were represented on a watching brief, the issue was a claim for liquidated ascertained damages for the late delivery of vacant possession, where the developer had been granted an extension of time to complete the project from 36 to 54 months and the question was whether limitation had set in so as to time-bar the purchaser's claim. The company's footprint maps the recurring disputes of a large development — common-property defects, infrastructure failures and delayed delivery — and the questions of joinder, contractual responsibility and limitation they raise.