http://www.straitstimes.com/archive/...issed-20141127

HORIZON TOWERS

Owners' bid to recover legal fees dismissed

Judge rules unrecovered costs part and parcel of resolving disputes

Published on Nov 27, 2014 1:21 AM

By Grace Leong


A GROUP of minority owners who got the $500 million Horizon Towers sale killed in the High Court are not entitled to claim more than $500,000 in unrecovered legal costs as these are "a necessary incidence of litigation".

The Court of Appeal upheld a decision by High Court Judge Vinodh Coomaraswamy who found that the minority owners have had their day in court and been awarded the appropriate costs.

They are, therefore, precluded from bringing a separate action to recover $585,370 in unrecovered legal costs, the judge had found.

Judge of Appeal Andrew Phang Boon Leong, who dismissed the minority owners' appeal last week, ruled that the "full recovery of legal costs by the successful party is the exception rather than the norm".

"This state of affairs is not something which exists to prejudice the winning party in litigation, but is a manifestation of the law's policy of enhancing access to justice for all," he said.

"Put another way, unrecovered legal costs are something which are part and parcel of resolving disputes by seeking recourse to our legal system, and all parties who come before our courts must accept this to be a necessary incidence of using the litigation process."

That is because, in order to promote access to justice, a limit is typically imposed on the losing party's liability, and the successful party also has to accept that some of the costs incurred will remain unrecovered.

The minority owners, Mr Then Khek Koon, his wife Jasmine Tan, Mr Rudy Darmawan, his wife Widia Seteono and Mr Darmawan's aunt Maryani Sadeli, were earlier awarded $354,370 by the Court of Appeal in a separate action after the deal was quashed.

But that was not all they had asked for, leaving a gap between what they recovered and what they had to pay their lawyers.

The minority owners went back to court in 2012 to argue that Mr Arjun Samtani, chairman of the first sales committee, and committee member Tan Kah Gee were obliged to compensate them for unrecovered costs.

Both were named as prime movers of the sale in a 2009 ruling that quashed the deal.

Mr Samtani, who is represented by Senior Counsel N. Sreenivasan of Straits Law, and Mr Tan, who is represented by Mr K. Anparasan of KhattarWong, contended that the claim is unsustainable since costs were already determined by the Court of Appeal.

At that 2009 hearing, the minority owners did not seek any costs orders personally against them, they pointed out.

Justice Coomaraswamy found that the owners were precluded from bringing their claim for costs as damages because they did have an opportunity earlier to seek an indemnity for their legal costs but "failed to grasp it".

The Court of Appeal judge upheld the ruling, finding that it was "an abuse of process for them to now claim as damages the costs of those previous proceedings".

The Court of Appeal awarded Mr Samtani and Mr Tan each $30,000 as costs of the appeal.

The legal spat over Horizon Towers began in early 2007.

The $500 million that Hotel Properties had offered for Horizon Towers in January 2007 was, at that time, the highest price paid for an en-bloc sale in Singapore.

But when the property market started rising in early 2007, the minority owners contested the sale, saying the price was too low. They fought all the way to the Court of Appeal, which eventually killed the sale in 2009.

By then, the courtroom battle had lasted 21/2 years and was estimated to have cost up to $4 million in lawyers' fees.

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