Re Success Lane Developments Ltd

On 15 September 2026, Deputy High Court Judge Cooper, KC handed down judgment in Re Success Lane Developments Ltd (HCCW 3/2025), dismissing a series of applications by the Company's former directors in the course of its winding-up and granting a Restricted Application Order against one of them. Mr Kurt Ng, instructed by Ho & Partners, acted for the Provisional Liquidators.

The dispute traces back to a 2022 lease. The Company rented a room at the New World Millennium Hong Kong Hotel; the Applicants, Mr Cheung Moon Hoi and his wife Ms Yung Mei Chun, then its directors, moved in along with around 200 boxes of "Stored Items". When rent fell into arrears, the hotel refused to release the items, asserting a lien. The Company sued the hotel for HK$2 million in damages; that litigation generated a welter of interlocutory skirmishes that drew repeated Court of Appeal warnings about baseless applications and the risk of personal costs orders against directors (§10). A statutory demand for costs orders totalling HK$734,667.58 led to the winding-up petition in January 2025, and a winding-up order was made on 17 March 2025.

The principal application was the Applicants' attempt to set aside the Provisional Liquidators' rejection of their Proof of Debt, asserting the Stored Items as their personal property and claiming HK$3 million from the Company. The court identified four problems: the position contradicted the case the Applicants had run as directors for three years; the figure had ballooned by HK$1 million without explanation or valuation; they were now blaming their own Company for damage while running it; and no cause of action was ever identified (§§19-26).

The court held that:

(1) the POD appeal was dismissed because the claim was incoherent and unsupported by any evidence (§29); (2) six other applications, for document production, costs, the summary procedure order, inspection, mandatory injunction, and funding disclosure, were all dismissed, several as unmeritorious fishing expeditions (§§31-53); (3) an RAO should be made against Cheung, whose conduct matched the description of a vexatious litigant in Ng Yat Chi v Max Share Ltd (§79); (4) costs of all applications, save Application VIII, should be paid on the indemnity basis, given the incoherence of the underlying claim and the attempts to derail and disrupt the hearing, including Yung's half-hour absence during a five-minute adjournment (§84).

The implications are concrete. A director who runs litigation on the basis that assets belong to the company cannot resile from that position simply to manufacture a creditor status in the liquidation. Where directors repeatedly file unmeritorious summonses, conceal a sole shareholder's death, and disrupt hearings, an RAO will follow; the judge noted an extended order would have been granted had it been sought (§79). Indemnity costs are likely to follow where conduct is unreasonable to a high degree, even without moral turpitude (§84).