Vacation of registered lis pendens

Yeung Tsz Ying v Shen Frieda Tong ([2012] HKEC 844) concerned an application for an order to vacate a registered lis pendens under section 19 of the Land Registration Ordinance on the grounds that it was not prosecuted bona fide or for other good cause. The court expressed the view that the section was concerned with the process or handling of the litigation rather than the reasons behind its institution (para. 18). It was a question of whether the plaintiff had been dilatory in prosecuting the action. This certainly could not be said of the plaintiff in these proceedings. The court went on, out of caution, to consider whether there was any bad faith involved in bringing the litigation and found that this was not self-evidently so and the matter would need to be explored at a trial of the action.

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