Category Archives: Conveyancing / Legal

Bid to stop re-routing of road rejected

A SPAT between two developers about the re-routing of an access road has gone all the way to the Court of Appeal.

Both Pacific Rover and Yickvi Realty have condominium projects on adjoining parcels of land off Newton Road. But Yickvi had a right-of-way access road to its new 11-storey property that cut through Pacific Rover’s land.

Pacific Rover, which had received planning permission to build two 30-storey residential units, wanted to optimise land usage and shift part of the access road nearer to the property’s boundary. Its condominium, called Trilight, is due to be completed in April 2011.

Yickvi initially agreed to the request, provided the subterranean electric cables, pipes and other service installations beneath the road were shifted in line with the newly adjusted road.

But talks broke down last year and the case went to the High Court, which ruled Yickvi could not object to the road shift as it would not cause a major inconvenience to the occupants of its building.

Yickvi, through lawyers from Rajah & Tann, appealed to the highest court, which agreed with the earlier ruling but ordered Pacific Rover to make sure Yickvi had immediate access, whenever reasonably required, to maintain and repair the cables running under the original route.

The Court of Appeal made clear the inconvenience caused by the realignment of the access road was not the real issue. Continue reading

Conveyancing fee guidelines scrapped

Law Society says all fees should be freely negotiated

The Law Society has scrapped its fee guidelines for conveyancing transactions six-and- a-half years after they were introduced.

The guidelines were issued in February 2003 after fixed scale fees were scrapped, to give lawyers some idea of the fair and reasonable fee to charge for conveyancing.

Yesterday, the Council of the Law Society said that as part of an ongoing review, the guidelines will be removed from Oct 1.

That is because they were intended as a transitional measure for lawyers after the abolishment of fixed fees, the Law Society said.

‘The Council believes that all fees should be freely negotiated between solicitors and their clients without guidelines from the Council (other than statutory guidelines).’ There was no reason to treat conveyancing fees differently, the society said in a statement.

Gan Hiang Chye of Rajah & Tann said that ‘by now lawyers have got a keen sense of conveyancing fees and of what is proper to charge. So we don’t actually need the guidelines any more,’ he said.

The Law Society said that despite the scrapping of the guidelines, lawyers still have an obligation to charge fairly and are prohibited from overcharging. Continue reading