SINGAPORE – A director of the now-closed Stansfield College will have her day in court to contest a claim by the Housing Board (HDB) for double rent of the private school’s tenanted premises totalling $84,000.
The High Court last week dismissed a bid by the HDB to file a further appeal against a lower court’s decision to allow Ms Cenobia Majella to raise a defence against the board’s claim for double rent.
Ms Majella, whose husband, Mr Kannappan Chettiar, founded the school in 1993, had stood as guarantor for Stansfield’s tenancy agreement for the property in Serangoon.
In September 2022, the HDB applied for summary judgment against Ms Majella for a sum of $123,706.52, which included $27,000 in rental arrears from November 2018 to January 2019, and $84,000 in double rent from Feb 1, 2019, to June 20, 2019.
This meant that it was asking the court to give a judgment in its favour without going to trial.
On the claim for double rent, the HDB’s case is that it has the contractual right to the amount because Ms Majella failed to hand over the property by Jan 31, 2019, after the tenancy was terminated.
However, Ms Majella argued that she had arranged for the keys to be returned by courier on Jan 30, 2019, but the keys were rejected by the HDB.
In January, a State Courts deputy registrar granted summary judgment in favour of the HDB for $29,208.75, mainly for rental arrears.
He also granted Ms Majella unconditional permission to contest all other aspects of the claim, including that for double rent.
The deputy registrar said he was not convinced that the HDB was entitled to summary judgment for double rent. This was because there was evidence that the HDB had rejected Ms Majella’s attempt to return the keys on Jan 30, 2019.
In an e-mail on Feb 14, 2019, an HDB officer told Ms Majella that the board could not accept the keys as the courier did not have a company’s resolution authorising him to return the keys.
The deputy registrar cited a precedent case where the court ruled that a party cannot rely on contractually stipulated deadlines if it had caused the other party to miss the deadlines.
He allowed Ms Majella, who is self-represented, to amend her defence to raise the argument that the HDB could no longer insist on its contractual rights if it had prevented her from returning the keys.
The HDB then appealed against the decision to grant her permission to contest the claim.
A principal district judge dismissed the appeal in February. He also dismissed the HDB’s subsequent application for permission to file a further appeal.
The HDB then filed the current application, seeking permission from the High Court to appeal.
Citing a particular court rule, the HDB argued that the principal district judge was wrong to have referred to amended documents that had not been filed before the deputy registrar.
In his judgment, Judicial Commissioner Goh Yihan disagreed, saying the rule does not constrain the documents that the court can consider on appeal.
He added that other rules gave an appellate court very broad latitude to consider relevant documents.
“It has to be remembered that procedural rules, while important, should be interpreted and applied in a manner that furthers the interest of substantive justice whenever possible,” he said.
He concluded that the principal district judge did not make an error of law, and that even if he did, the error did not rise to a level that justified the granting of permission to appeal.
Stansfield, which provided University of London international degree and diploma programmes, had its registration as a private education institute cancelled in 2017 after failing to meet regulatory requirements.
