The court held that failure to comply with an oral agreement regarding property shares constitutes grounds for restitution and breach of trust.

Table of Content
1. summary of legal conclusions surrounding oral agreements and breach. (Para 31 , 32)

The court of Appeal in that case referred to the judgment of Edgar Joseph Jr J (as he then was) in Tan Cheng Hock v. Chan Thean Soo , 1986 MarsdenLR 825 where the learned judge:

I therefore asked myself the question whether I should draw an adverse inference against Chan, from his failure to reply.

In Wiedemann v. Walpole [1891] 2 QB 534, 537, an action for breach of promise of marriage, it was held, that the mere fact that the defendant did not answer letters written to him by the plaintiff in which she stated that he had promised to marry her, was no evidence corroborating the plaintiffs testimony in support of such promise. Lord Esher M R, in his judgment, remarked, Here, we have only to see whether the mere fact of not answering the letters, with nothing else for us to consider is any evidence in corroboration of the promise. (Emphasis added). Earlier, in his judgment, he said, Now there are cases; business and mercantile cases in which the Courts have taken notice that, in the ordinary course of business, if one man of business states in a letter to another that he has agreed to do certain things, the person who receives that letter must answer it if he means to dispute the fact that he did so agree.

In this case, having regard to the shifting stances adopted by Chan when cross-examined about the two notes, I did at one stage think that perhaps his silence upon receipt of those notes might be construed as an admission of their contents. However, at the end of the day, I considered that to be fair to him, I should not so construe his silence. Accordingly, I did not treat his silence as an admission of the contents of the notes.

The learned judge in Tan Cheng Hock v. Chan Thean Soo [supra] had stated that generally the law requires the recipient of a letter containing a contrary assertion to the recipient's stand to promptly reply and refute that assertion; but however on the facts of that case, he did not wish to draw any adverse inference from the defendant's failure to do so. That however, is not the situation in our case. The facts of our case demands the Defendants to have promptly and vigorously deny the Plaintiff's assertion of the oral agreement, if such an agreement did not exist.

[27] In applying the pronouncements in these case authorities, I find that when the overall evidence is considered, the Defendant's silence upon receipt of those letters from the Plaintiff's solicitors must be construed as an admission of their contents.

[28] When there was no reply forth coming from the Defendants, the Plaintiff's solicitors sent a Notice Before Action dated 30 March 2016, and this too the Defendants' solicitors failed to reply. The Plaintiff then filed this action in May 2016.

[29] This is a sad case which any father would want to avoid, ie suing his own daughter and son in law for return of his property that he had trustingly transferred to help them in their hour of need. The Plaintiff not only took great risk in allowing his property to be charged as collateral for a loan, which was taken entirely for the benefit of the Defendants; but also paid some of the monthly loan instalments when the Defendants were unable to do so. The Plaintiff in fact settled the final outstanding sum in order to redeem the Property. And when asked to retransfer the 2/3 shares to the Plaintiff, the Defendants had the audacity to demand the sum of RM200,000.00, which is not only arbitrary but wholly without any basis whatsoever. When the Plaintiff, through his solicitor's letters, pointed out the folly of their ways, and asked them to keep their oral agreement, the Defendants keep their silence and did not refute the Plaintiff's version of the events. And when the Plaintiff was left with no option but to come to court, the Defendants concocted a story in order to defeat the claim.

[30] The evidence shows that the actions of the Defendants are cle

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