…wealth cannot offer an answer to all the problems in life, particularly in the wake of the final rest that every human being has to face eventually. Rather, wealth may bring about a problem as to how one should deal with it after one’s death.

The services by way of hole-digging exercises did not bring about the cure.

In line with Google’s drop of support for Internet Explorer 6, the website development arm of Raven Talon Studios will no longer provide support to the Internet Explorer 6 browser. There will be a 20 day grace period for IE6 users to upgrade to IE7+ or better browsers such as webkit and gecko-based browsers.

At 1pm today, we went through our digital archives to retrieve a rare moment in history, when news coverage of Haiti exceeded that of coverage in USA and Iraq. Here it is:

We live in a city where antitrust laws have done their utmost to the public good. Our cellphone plans are cheap, our food is quite cheap, our trains are on time and air conditioned, our airport is world-class… and the list goes on. Meanwhile, lets take a look at the stone-age cell phone plans in the USA!

In a recent controversial move, the University of Hong Kong published plans to offer members of the public “preliminary legal advice” and to “promote pro bono culture”. Critics say that this move will usurp the function of the struggling junior bar as well as high street solicitors whose function is precisely low-cost preliminary involvement in legal matters. Critics are concerned that with the massive number of PCLL graduates diluting the elite pool of lawyers at the junior end as well as with the recent Civil Justice Reforms implemented in April 2009, the junior end of the bar is struggling to make ends meet. It appears that the University is aggressively positioning itself to initiate a price war that it, being funded by public funds, will surely win.

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It appears that the more you are taxed, the lower your quality of life. Or more accurately, the fewer Macs you can afford, the worse off you are.

or so the adage goes… but not if you live in a Hong Kong flat. Firstly, you don’t own it, you only have a right to exclusive possession of your tiny space. Secondly, if you try to make a moat, you’ll be sued by the owners’ committee.

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Many people are given false confidence in legal documents; simply because they are written in black and white doesn’t mean much in the obscure face of the law.

In a typical real estate transaction, the parties enter into a sale and purchase agreement (SPA) that contemplates a closing where the real estate is assigned by a deed. What happens to the obligations stated in the SPA after the deed is delivered? Under the “merger doctrine”, which some lawyers assert is trite law, those obligations likely disappear and are no longer enforceable.

For example, Morgan Stanley negotiates a purchase agreement to buy a parcel of undeveloped land that is zoned agricultural. They include in the SPA a requirement that the seller rezone the land before the closing to enable them to build a villa. The seller fails to rezone the land, but MS closes anyway and accepts a deed from the seller. MS will not be able to sue the seller after the closing to enforce the rezoning requirement in the SPA. The merger doctrine says that all prior negotiations and agreements – including that purchase agreement, are deemed “merged” into the deed. The prior SPA ‘disappears’, and the rights of the parties are governed solely by the deed. Unless the deed restates the obligation that was in the purchase agreement, the obligation ceases to exist.

See, e.g. Ho King Yim v Lau King Mo 1980 HKCA and the root key case of Leggott v Barrett (1880) 15 ChD 306.

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