In Greatland Property Consultants Ltd v Charis Patria Ltd ([2016] HKEC 2518) C signed sale and purchase agreements to sell two floors of a building to P (a company that owned two other floors of the building) for a total consideration of HK$ 6 million. This meant that P owned 80% of the shares in the building and could apply for a compulsory sale of the property under the Land (Compulsory Sale for Redevelopment) Ordinance. The sale was arranged by L, an estate agent. C had made it clear to L that it was prepared to sell for HK$6 million but that the price for a sale to P would be much higher. L represented to C that the buyer was a businessman from the mainland. On this basis, C agreed to sell for HK$ 6 million. The provisional sale and purchase agreements provided for C to pay L HK$60,000 by way of commission (or agreed damages if the sale did not go ahead). When C discovered that P was the purchaser it rescinded the sale and purchase agreements and paid P HK$300,000 by way of liquidated damages.
L brought proceedings against C claiming the HK60,000 she alleged was due under the sale and purchase agreements. C’s defence was that L had misrepresented the identity of the purchasers. To facilitate this, L had written the purchasers’ name in Chinese so that C would not realise that the purchaser was P. Although P’s company chop was placed next to the signature of the authorised signatory, this was only done after C’s representative had signed so that C had no way of seeing it before the contract was entered into. Overturning the finding at first instance that this misrepresentation had not induced the contract, the Court of Appeal (Chu JA giving the main judgment) held that C’s defence was successful. Its counterclaim to recover from L the HK$300,000 it had paid in damages to P was also successful.
Michael Lower
