PUTRAJAYA, October 29, 2026 — A joint management body (JMB) cannot lock property owners out of their own units because they owe maintenance charges, Malaysia’s Court of Appeal has ruled, setting a clear limit on one of the toughest tactics used by building managers to collect arrears.
A three-member bench chaired by Justice Alwi Abdul Wahab, sitting with Justices Shahnaz Sulaiman and Ong Chee Kwan, unanimously allowed an appeal by developer SL Land Sdn Bhd and Foong Wei Ching against the JMB of Sentral Bazar, a strata commercial development in Nilai, Negeri Sembilan. The decision was reported on October 26.
What happened at Sentral Bazar
The dispute began in 2023. On May 4 and again on June 20 that year, the JMB refused to let SL Land’s directors and authorised agents enter the company’s units. It also insisted that the company’s shareholders be present, or give their consent, before anyone could go in.
SL Land went to court. The High Court sided with the JMB, upholding its power to set conditions on entry by owners in default under the Strata Management (Maintenance and Management) Regulations 2015, and ordered SL Land to pay RM30,000 in costs.
What the Court of Appeal decided
Justice Ong, who delivered the broad grounds, said the regulations list the steps a JMB may take against defaulters: deactivating access cards, requiring them to sign a register when they ask for help to enter or leave the building, and suspending their use of common facilities and services. Under the Third Schedule, access cards may be deactivated after 14 days of non-payment, with any reactivation fee capped at RM50, according to EdgeProp.
None of those measures, the judge said, lets a JMB keep an owner out of property the owner holds.
“The sanction it authorises is an inconvenience and a record. It presupposes entry. It does not authorise exclusion,” Ong said.
Barring an owner from a unit, he said, is far more drastic than anything the regulations allow and interferes with the owner’s right to use and enjoy the property. Such a power would need a clear legal basis, and none exists.
The court:
- declared the refusals of entry on May 4 and June 20, 2023 unlawful;
- ruled that demanding shareholders be present or consent before entry also had no legal basis;
- granted an injunction stopping the JMB from blocking access, while keeping its powers under the regulations and any reasonable security rules that apply equally to all proprietors;
- set aside the High Court’s RM30,000 costs order and awarded SL Land nominal damages, as the company had not proved substantial loss;
- ordered the JMB to pay RM50,000 in costs for both courts.
What it means for owners and JMBs
The ruling does not wipe out arrears. Owners still owe their maintenance charges and sinking fund contributions, and JMBs keep the tools the regulations give them, including cutting off access cards and suspending use of the pool, gym and other shared facilities.
What JMBs and management corporations cannot do is turn those tools into a lockout. Many condominiums and strata malls across Malaysia use access-card barriers, guards and visitor registers, and disputes over unpaid charges often end at the gate. The appellate court has now drawn the line: a defaulting owner can be inconvenienced and recorded, but not shut out of the unit itself.
The lawyers on both sides
SL Land and Foong were represented by Ivanpal Singh Grewal, Harwinder Kaur and S Nisha.
Ivanpal Singh Grewal is a senior partner at A.J. Ariffin, Yeo & Harpal and the son of the late Harpal Singh Grewal, a lawyer called to the Bar in 1975 who acted for banks, property developers and public figures, and briefly for former prime minister Najib Razak in the SRC International case, before he died in August 2024. According to his firm, Ivanpal studied at Cardiff University, holds a master’s in international commercial law from the University of Edinburgh, and earlier served as political secretary to former plantations minister Mah Siew Keong.
The Sentral Bazar win comes in a busy month for him. On October 13 he argued for Perikatan Nasional in the High Court, which granted the coalition leave to challenge its suspension by the Registrar of Societies but refused an immediate stay. “At the moment, PN cannot meet and decide on its candidates. It cannot engage its grassroots and prepare for the election,” he told the court. The stay was granted on October 22 with Azhar Azizan Harun leading for the coalition. Ivanpal also acted for MonSpace and its founder Jessy Lai in their defamation case against Kepong MP Lim Lip Eng, which the Court of Appeal upheld in 2025 while cutting the damages from RM2 million to RM75,000.
The JMB was represented by K Muralidharan and Ahmad Amir Mukhlis. Neither has a large public footprint in reported cases, and this appeal is their most prominent reported matter to date.
The JMB may still seek leave to appeal to the Federal Court. Owners in a dispute with their building management should get advice from a lawyer or the Strata Management Tribunal before taking action.
Sources
- JMBs can't bar owners from units over unpaid fees, court rules (FMT)
- JMBs can deactivate access cards, but cannot bar owners from units (EdgeProp)
- Locked out over maintenance fees? Court says JMBs can't do that (Malay Mail)
- PN gets leave to commence judicial review against RoS (FMT)
- Court stays PN's deregistration (FMT)
- Ivanpal Singh Grewal (A.J. Ariffin, Yeo & Harpal)
- Kepong MP's defamation damages reduced to RM75,000 (Bernama)
Photo: Wolfiewhite (Wikimedia Commons) (CC0)
