Thomson J (delivering oral JUDGMENT):

This is an appeal from the Sessions Court at Taiping. The plaintiff in these proceedings is the owner and the defendant is the tenant of premises at No 34 Market Road, Taiping. In the proceedings in the Sessions Court, the plaintiff asked for and he got ejectment. Against that the defendant in these proceedings has now appealed.

I propose to deal with the matter in this way. In proceedings of this nature, the first question the Court has to determine is whether or not the tenancy has been lawfully determined by notice or otherwise. This tenancy was a monthly tenancy. It is admitted that notice to quit was good and it is admitted that the tenant stayed on after the expiration of that notice. Apart, then, from the provision of the Control of Rent Ordinance, the landlord was entitled to ejectment.

The next question the Court has to consider was whether the tenant was entitled to the protection of the Control of Rent Ordinance. There was no question of rent being in arrear and therefore the Court had to be satisfied of two things before it can say the tenant was not entitled to the protection of the Ordinance.

The first of these was that the landlord had obtained permission in writing of the Rent Assessment Board to apply for ejectment, and the second was that the case fell within one or other of the provisions of s 13(1) of the Ordinance.

As regards the first of these points the landlord did have the permission in writing of the Rent Assessment Board to apply for ejectment. It has been said that that permission should be disregarded because at the time the landlord applied for it to the Board he had not determined the contractual tenancy. I disagree and I do so for two reasons.

The first is that I can nowhere find any declaration by the Legislature as to the principles which should govern the Rent Assessment Board in connection with such application. Obviously, the Board is not going to give permission in a case where a subsequent application to the Court is unlikely to be successful. That, however, is merely a consideration of prudence and it seems to me that provided the ordinary principles of natural justice are observed, that is to say, both sides being given a fair hearing and so forth, the Rent Assessment Board has a free-hand.

The second reason is that (whether I be right or wrong as to the first reason) the Sessions Court has no power nor indeed has this Court, to go behind a decision of the Rent Assessment Board. If a Rent Assessment Board acts without jurisdiction or if it violates the principles of natural justice, no doubt its actions can be called in question, but they can only be called in question by way of certiorari.Apart from that as I have already held in this Court, and rightly held (1), there is no right of appeal from a Rent Assessment Board and to say, as I have been invited to say, that the Sessions Court not only can but should go behind a decision of a Rent Board on the ground that it is wrong in law would, in effect, be conferring such a right of appeal, which, as I have already held, the Legislature has not seen fit to give. So much then for the question of the permission of the Rent Board.

The only question that then remained for the Sessions Court to decide was whether the case fell within one of the paragraphs of s 13(1), the particular paragraph in question being para.(j) which provides that where the tenant having sub-let the premises or part thereof receives in respect of such letting rents exclusive of payments by the tenant for Municipal and Town Board services which exceed in the aggregate 750f the rent paid by the tenant.

In the present case the rent paid by the tenant was $25 a month and the monthly rents received by him from the sub-tenants up till some date (which has not been exactly proved) in September 1953, was $50.

Before going further with the question of the figures, I am going to remind myself of what was said by Sir Harold Willan in the case of