Wong v Grand View PTC Ltd and Ors

• Jurisdiction: Bermuda
• Judgment Date: 22 June 2022
• Court: Supreme Court (Bermuda)
• Docket Number: Commercial Jurisdiction 2018 No 44

Between:

Wong, Wen-Young

Plaintiff/Applicant

and

Grand View Private Trust Company Limited

Transglobe Private Trust Company Limited

Vantura Private Trust Company Limited

Universal Link Private Trust Company Limited

Estate of Hung Wen-Hsiung, dec'd

Ocean View Private Trust Company Limited

Wang, Ruey Hwa (aka Susan Wong)

Defendants/Respondents

Wang, Ven-Jiao (aka Tong Wang)

Wang, Hsueh-Min (aka Jennifer Wang) (as joint Administrators of the Bermudian estate of YT Wang)

Defendants

[2022] Bda LR 59

Commercial Jurisdiction 2018 No 44

In The Supreme Court of Bermuda

Purpose trusts — Statutory interpretation — Whether trusts are void due to mixed charitable and non-charitable purposes or on grounds of uncertainty — Whether founding of trusts vitiated by mistake, undue influence, lack of authority, mental incapacity and/or failure to comply with requirements for writing — Whether Bermuda, BVI or Taiwanese law applies to claims — Whether English Statute of Frauds Act 1677 received into BVI law upon settlement at common law — Whether foreign limitation periods should be disapplied on public policy grounds

The following cases were referred to in the judgment:

Macmillan v Bishopsgate Investment Trust Plc (No 3) [1996] 1 WLR 387

Akers v Samba Financial Group [2017] AC 424

Gotha City v Sotheby's (The Times 8 October 1998)

Investec Trust (Guernsey) Ltd v Glenalla Properties Ltd [2018] UKPC 7

Haugesund Kommune v Depfa ACS Bank [2012] QB 549

Whittaker v Concept Fiduciaries Ltd (Guernsey 15/2017)

Dervan v Concept Fiduciaries Ltd (Guernsey 38/2012)

Schroder Cayman Bank & Trust Co Ltd v Schroder Trust AG [2015] 1 CILR 239

Harley v Smith [2010] EWCA Civ 78

Pitt v Holt [2013] 2 AC 108

Pesticcio v Huet [2003] WTLR 1327

Daniel v Drew [2005] EWCA Civ 507

Royal Bank of Scotland plc v Etridge [2002] 2 AC 773

Re Beaney [1978] 1 WLR 770

Kicks v Leigh [2015] 4 All ER 329

Kunicki v Hayward [2017] 4 WLR 32

Re Key [2010] 1 WLR 2020

Grand View PTC Ltd v Wong and Ors [2020] Bda LR 29

Arnold v Britton [2015] AC 1619

High Commissioner for Pakistan v Prince Mukkaram Jah & Ors [2016] WTLR 1763

KXL et al v Murphy and the Society of Missionaries of Africa [2016] EWHC 3102

Leahy v Attorney General of New South Wales [1959] AC 457

Trustees 1–4 v Attorney General [2014] Bda LR 86

Nokes v Doncaster Amalgamated Collieries Ltd [1940] AC 1014

St John's Trust Co (PVT) Ltd v Watlington [2020] Bda LR 25

Brooks v Richardson [1986] 1 WLR 385

Barclays Bank and Trust (Cayman) Ltd v C, K and Attorney General [2014] 1 CILR 144

Re A Trust (Change of Governing Law) [2017] Bda LR 53

Commissioner of Inland Revenue v Hang Seng Bank Ltd [1991] 1 AC 306

Wood and Whitebread v R (Re Russell) [1977] 6 WWR 273

McGovern v Attorney General [1982] 3 Ch 321

In re Baden's Deed Trusts [1971] AC 424

Whicker v Hume (1858) 7 HL Cas 124

Inland Revenue Commissioners v McMullen [1981] AC 1

Gumbs v Attorney General of Anguilla [2009] UKPC 27

Hamilton v Secretary of State for Business [2021] 1 WLR 1717

Cooper v Stuart [1889] UKPC 1

Macdonald v Levy (1833) 1 Legge 39

Waren v Immigration Board [2002] CILR 188

Christian v R [2007] AC 400

Jerdein v Bright (1861) 2 J&H 325

Vendervell v IRC [1967] 2 AC 291

Re LBIE [2014] 2 BCLC 295

Pehrsson, a bankrupt v von Greyerz (Gibraltar) (1999–2000) 2 ITELR 230

Mrs E Talbot Rice QC, Mr D Hagen QC, Mr R Attride-Stirling and Mr S Dunleavy for the Plaintiff

Mr R Wilson QC, Prof J Harris QC and Mrs F Rana-Fahy for the 8^th Defendant

Mr S Midwinter QC, Mr S White and Mr J McSweeney for the 5^th Defendant

Mr M Howard QC, Mr J Adkin QC, M S Pearman and Mr P Smith for the 1^st – 4^th and 6^th Defendants

Mr S Pearman and Mr P Smith for the 7^th Defendant

JUDGMENT of Kawaley AJ

Description	Paragraph Nos
Prologue	1–3
Introduction and Summary	4–14
The Issues in controversy	15–19
The Main legal issues in controversy	20
Summary of Fact Evidence	21–210
Summary of Expert Evidence	211–300
The Applicable Laws Issues	301–369
Mistake Claims under Bermuda and/or BVI Law	370–444
Undue Influence Claims under Bermuda and/or BVI Law	445–455
Lack of Authority Claims	456–556
Tony Wang's Ocean View Trust Claims	557–649
Provisional findings: Tony Wang's motives for bringing his Claims in the present proceedings	650–654
The Trustees' Powers of Appointment Counterclaim	655–674
The Limitation Defences	675–693
Mixed Purposes Trust Claims	694–749
Trusts Void for Uncertainty Claims	750–858
Formalities Claim (Statute of Frauds)	859–947
Provisional findings: The Plaintiff's Motives for bringing his unsuccessful Claims	948–952
Conclusion	953–956

PROLOGUE

1. In an iconic early scene in Mike Nichols' fictional 1967 coming of age movie ‘The Graduate’, set in part at the University of California Berkeley campus, Ben is cornered at a party by a friend of his overbearing father who offers a word to the wise: “Ben, I've got just one word for you: ‘plastics’. There's a great future in it”. Meanwhile, in real world Taiwan, YC Wang (“YC”) had already formed Formosa Plastics Corporation (“FPC”) 13 years earlier. In 1957 a family friend, Wen-Hsiung Hung (“Mr Hung”), joined FPC. The following year YC persuaded his younger brother YT Wang (“YT”) to join FPC, doubtless telling him that there was a great future in the business.

2. The Plaintiff, YC's first-born son, was completing his English boarding education and beginning his English University studies as the seismic inter-generational shifts reflected in part in student protests shook the Western world in the late 1960s. By Dr Wong's own account, it was “somewhat of a cultural shock” when he returned to comparatively traditional Taiwan in 1980 with a British Chinese wife, after completing doctoral studies in London in 1975 and working for five years in the United States. The sixties were, Dr Wong recalled in his evidence, “the period of the Beatles, of the hippies, of the mini-skirts and micro-skirts. So it was quite a period”. It is impossible to make sense of the present litigation without attempting to understand, if only in an impressionistic way, the dramatic falling out between the by now middle-aged Winston and his father in 1996.1 This rupture resulted in the senior son and traditionally appointed heir apparent of YC being publicly banished from the family business, which was by then virtually a national institution in Taiwan.

3. In the imagined world of ‘The Graduate’, the young Ben (having fallen out with his father) pursued romantic love on the nearby Campus of Berkeley. Two decades later in the real world, after his dizzying fall from grace, Dr Wong admitted to feeling “bewildered and directionless”. However, he travelled nearly 7,000 miles from Taipei to the University of California at Berkeley in pursuit of his love of academe and for a brief sojourn as a visiting scholar. Dr Wong eventually rediscovered his focus and ultimately embarked upon a long and winding road that resulted in him joining arms with his cousin Tony Wang and bringing the present litigation to this Court's door.

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

4. The Plaintiff (referred to by his counsel at trial as Dr Wong) commenced the present proceedings on February 21, 2018. D8, the Plaintiff's cousin (referred to at trial by his counsel as “Tony”) was joined as a Defendant on March 9, 2020 together with his half-sister Jennifer Wang (D9). The Plaintiff, as the administrator of his late father's estate in Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands (“BVI”) (since 2016 and 2017, respectively2) and D8, as an administrator of his late father's estate in Bermuda and BVI (since 2020 and 2021, respectively), joined arms together (together, the “Claimants”) to launch a concerted attack on the validity of five Bermuda purpose trusts, purportedly settled by their fathers (YC and YT (the “Founders”)) as part of what may loosely be described as an estate planning exercise principally carried out between 2001 and 2005. In the cross-hairs of the Claimants' legal assault weapons are the following five purpose trusts (together, the “Bermuda Purpose Trusts” and, the first four together the “First Four Bermuda Purpose Trusts”):

• (a) the Wang Family Trust (declared May 10, 2001 – trustee, Grand View Private Trust Company Limited – “Grand View PTC”);

• (b) the China Trust (declared June 24, 2002 – trustee, Transglobe Private Trust Company Limited – “Transglobe PTC”);

• (c) the Vantura Trust (declared May 9, 2005 – trustee, Vantura Private Trust Company Limited – “Vantura PTC”);

• (d) the Universal Link Trust (declared May 9, 2005 – trustee, Universal Link Private Trust Company Limited – “Universal Link PTC”);

• (e) the Ocean View Trust (declared March 8, 2013 – trustee, Ocean View Private Trust Company Limited – “Ocean View PTC”).

5. The main Defendants were the five private trust companies, referred to by their counsel as the “Trustees” but referred to by the Claimants, keen to point out that they were not independent professional trustees, as the “PTCs”. D5, the Hung Estate, was to a significant extent a default defendant against whom relief was sought in the event that effective relief was not obtained as against the Trustees in respect of certain claims. Mr Hung was the loyal servant of YC and YT with longstanding family ties to them. The Claimants in their oral evidence appeared to withdraw any suggestion that Mr Hung had deliberately acted against the Founders' wishes. D7, Susan Wang, referred to by her counsel as “Susan”, was joined as a Defendant because certain powers of appointment had been conferred on her in relation to certain assets transferred to the Wang Family Trust and the Ocean View Trust. In the absence of unanimity amongst the parties about referring to the Founders' children by their first names, I generally refer to them all (save for...