A property agent who lost her High Court bid last year to claim $316,000 from a married couple has failed again at the appeal stage - but this time, her case was thrown out for a different reason.
Ms Ong Keh Choo, also known as Jeannette, had sued American research scientist Paul Huntington Bernardo and his wife, Vietnamese medical concierge Tran Hong Hanh, for cancelling a cheque they had given her after viewing a Balmoral Road apartment in October 2017.
The couple, who are Singapore permanent residents, cancelled the $316,000 cheque after finding out that she was the owner of the apartment, a fact Ms Ong had failed to disclose to them.
In September last year, the High Court dismissed Ms Ong's lawsuit to claim the money, which she contended was the fee for an option to purchase the $3.16 million property. The High Court judge accepted the couple's version that the cheque had been issued only "for show", that is, to show their sincerity as genuine buyers, pending further negotiations with the owner on the price.
However, the Court of Appeal, in a written judgment on Thursday, disagreed.
The three-judge court concluded that the cheque was not issued "for show", but rather, to secure an option to purchase the property.
The Court of Appeal pointed to evidence such as details on the counterfoil of the couple's cheque book, WhatsApp messages between the parties and the absence of price negotiations after the cheque was issued. Still, the apex court dismissed Ms Ong's appeal because the option to purchase was terminated mutually.
The court said messages exchanged between Ms Tran and Ms Ong were consistent with the buyer's claim that the agent had offered to terminate the option and return the cheque.
There were other subsequent messages between them which showed that Ms Tran had accepted the offer to terminate the option.
Although the couple won the appeal, the apex court awarded them only 25 per cent of the legal costs of the appeal and trial, noting that they succeeded on only one main issue. "Much time and costs have been wasted by various unsuccessful defences which they raised, some of which were inconsistent with other positions which they took," said the judgment, delivered by Justice Woo Bih Li.
The court also noted that the couple had filed an "unnecessary" counterclaim, seeking a declaration that the contract was void or unenforceable.
This was "meaningless because all that is needed is a dismissal of the plaintiff's claim", said the court, which also comprised Judge of Appeal Judith Prakash and Justice Belinda Ang.
"This is not to say that we overlook the appellant's conduct in misleading the respondents as to who the true owner was," said the court.
In particular, the court said Ms Ong had acted "unscrupulously" in seeking to take advantage of Ms Tran by imposing disadvantageous terms of payment in the option to purchase.
The terms stated that the couple had to pay an option fee of 10 per cent of the purchase price, when the usual market practice is 1 per cent. The couple also had to pay the remaining 90 per cent upon exercise of the option, rather than the typical practice of paying upon completion.
