Rita Kishinchand Bhojwani v HVS Properties Private Limited and others

Rita Kishinchand Bhojwani sued HVS Properties Pte Ltd, a family company controlled by her father (KTB), together with her mother (D2) and a co-director, Win Phyu Shwe (Cindy), in Suit No 848 of 2021. Since 2010 the plaintiff had lived with her parents in an apartment at Seafront on Meyer owned by the company, under tenancy agreements between D2 and the company. Amid her litigation against her brother Sunil, including a personal protection order application, a challenge to the lasting power of attorney KTB had granted him, and a deputyship application, D2 and Cindy signed board resolutions on 23 August 2021 barring her from the apartment. On 25 August 2021, after the first day of the protection order trial, she was locked out and found her belongings boxed in the corridor. D2's lawyers had earlier written in March and August 2021 asking her to leave.

The plaintiff claimed that Sunil had orchestrated the eviction, and that she had a right to live in the apartment rent-free for life, based on proprietary estoppel, an irrevocable contractual licence, or a bare licence not ended by reasonable notice, and on a claimed beneficial interest in company shares. She also sued for conspiracy and dishonest assistance. Sunil was not a party. During the trial she made concessions under cross-examination, tried to retract them the next day after meeting her lawyer, and then called D2 as her own witness. The defendants then submitted that there was no case to answer and called no evidence.

1. Whether the plaintiff established a proprietary estoppel giving her a right to live in the apartment
2. Whether she had a contractual licence, or a bare licence ended without reasonable notice
3. Whether her claimed beneficial interest in company shares gave her any right in the apartment
4. Whether the defendants were liable for conspiracy or dishonest assistance over the eviction

Because the defendants called no evidence, the plaintiff needed only a prima facie case on each element, but the court held that evidence which is inherently unreliable does not meet that standard. D2's unqualified testimony, given as the plaintiff's own witness, formed part of the plaintiff's evidence.

On the concessions, the court disallowed counsel's request to advise the plaintiff mid-cross-examination and rejected her retraction. Her explanations of confusion and emotion were unsupported, her account of the meeting contradicted what her lawyer told the court, and she initially denied speaking to her son that evening before admitting she had.

On proprietary estoppel, the plaintiff gave shifting accounts of who made the representation and what it was, none of it pleaded or in her affidavit, and D2 testified that no promise of a lifelong right to stay was made. Financial provision through a trust, sheltering her after a family incident and involving her in buying the flat did not imply an irrevocable right. Nor was detriment or reliance shown: she had conceded she cared for her parents out of love, helpers lived in the home, the court did not accept that she was the primary caregiver, her property work was paid work under an employment contract with the company, renovations were paid by her parents, the evidence showed she had not worked outside the family for decades, and the other properties she said she gave up were, on her own earlier sworn affidavit, not hers to give or yielded her a share of sale proceeds. Any equity would likely have been satisfied by years of rent-free living and support.

On contract, there was no evidence of intention to create legal relations in this family setting, and any licence would have been terminable for unreasonable conduct, which the court found on D2's evidence of repeated litigation, recordings and conflict in the household. A bare licence was assumed, and the two lawyers' letters were held to be sufficient notice; in any event, the plaintiff's suggested figures for damages appeared only in closing submissions with no evidence behind them. Holding shares would not give her an interest in company property, and she had earlier deposed that she held them on trust for KTB. The conspiracy claim failed for lack of evidence of an agreement or any intention to injure; D2 said the eviction was because the plaintiff was causing trouble. No trust was identified for dishonest assistance.

Christopher Tan JC accepted the defendants' submission of no case to answer and dismissed all of the plaintiff's claims, finding that they were not established even to a prima facie standard.