Wong Tak Keung Stanley and Another v. The Incorporated Owners of Grenville House

On 25 September 2026, Deputy High Court Judge Wilken KC handed down judgment in Wong Tak Keung Stanley and Another v The Incorporated Owners of Grenville House (HCA 761/2022, [2026] HKCFI 5470), a bitterly contested dispute over water ingress, gas supply and a renovation deposit at the penthouse of Block CD, Grenville House, Mid-Levels. The trial ran from 7 to 16 September 2026 with live transcript and e-bundle. Mr Wong Tak Keung Stanley and Ms Claudia Canepa Wong were represented by Bernard Man SC with Shaun Elijah Tan of Jones Day. The IO was represented by Jonathan Chang SC with Vincent Lung and Calvin Ng of Johnson Stokes & Master.

The action involved twenty pleaded issues falling into three topics: water leaks at the Property (causation, duration, remedial works and quantum), absence of gas supply between November 2020 and January 2021, and return of a renovation deposit. The pleadings had been the subject of extensive amendment and cross-pleading points, with the Plaintiffs alleging that the IO's management committee harboured personal animosity against Mr Wong stemming from his six-year chairmanship.

The Court rejected paragraphs 34 and 35 of the Amended Statement of Claim in their entirety (§§45–47). The IO's witnesses were found clear and persuasive on this point, and the judge held that the Plaintiffs themselves were the cause of the acrimony (§51). The judge also found that Mr Wong did deny access to contractors to carry out remedial works, regardless of whether one characterises requests for further information as refusal (§74). Three years of pleading, cross and bundled-application history had yielded, in the court's words, conduct that "should never happen again" (§57).

On the leaks themselves, the Court held that: (1) ten of the eleven pleaded leaks were caused by water ingress from the common parts, namely the roof and external walls, save for Leak 11 on the balcony soffit which was caused by direct rainfall to the semi-open exterior (§132–133); (2) the 35% WME benchmark advocated by Dr Lau was not dispositive on the facts and the IO's reliance on it was rejected (§139); (3) neither party's expert fully assisted the Court, with Dr Lau's evidence on "impossibility" of roof seepage rejected as overstated (§§100, 107) and Mr Samson Wong found cautious and on occasion formulating responses to advance a case (§105). The microwave testing by Modern dated 15 August 2023 was treated as the most probative objective evidence (§113).

Despite finding the leaks came from the common parts historically, the Court could not determine the current source or sources of ongoing ingress, and consequently could not resolve remedial works or quantum (§155). The Plaintiffs' case was therefore not non-suited, the judge reasoning that Henderson v Henderson (1843) 3 Hare 100 and the doctrine of merger, combined with the parties' invitation not to dispose of the matter at this stage, required the claim to survive for further consideration (§§160–161).

For practitioners, the case illustrates three things. First, where pleadings accuse an IO of animus driven by the owner's prior chairmanship, those allegations will be closely scrutinised and may be rejected as a driver of the dispute (§§46, 51). Second, on water ingress claims against an IO, parties should adduce current testing data showing the specific source of ongoing leaks; historical Trusty reports and protimeter readings tied to an arbitrary WME threshold will not suffice to establish quantum of present-day remediation (§§115, 139, 155). Third, the joint expert regime under Ikarian Reefer remains the benchmark, and experts who adopt positions of "impossibility" or who fail to engage with their counterpart's evidence risk having their evidence discounted in its entirety (§§100–107).