If the owner of a building as indicated in the first-time registration disposition by a registration agency concerning the ownership of the building brought a revocation action in response to unfavorable changes to the rights registration disposition in order to eliminate regulatory effects, it should be necessary to protect such rights (Taiwan)

2018.7.12
Frank Sun

The Supreme Administrative Court rendered the 107-Pan-404 Decision of July 12, 2018 (hereinafter, the “Decision”), holding that if the owner of a building as indicated in the first-time registration disposition by a registration agency concerning the ownership of the building brought a revocation action in response to unfavorable changes to the rights registration disposition in order to eliminate regulatory effects, it should be necessary to protect such rights.

According to the facts underlying this Decision, the Plaintiff applied to the Defendant agency for first-time ownership registration of the building at issue.  The Intervenor petitioned that the building at issue was his ancestral house and requested the cancellation of the ownership registration of the building at issue.  After the Defendant agency issued the original disposition to deny the petition, the Intervenor was dissatisfied and brought an administrative action pursuant to applicable procedures.

According to the Decision, Article 7 of the Land Registration Regulations provides: “Except as otherwise stipulated by the Regulations, the registration agency shall not cancel any land right that has been duly registered pursuant to the Regulations without a final court decision compelling cancellation.”  The so-called “court decision compelling cancellation” means a court decision with registration cancellation as the object.  Therefore, the first-time ownership registration of a building by a registration agency pursuant to the Land Regulation Regulations effectively grants the ownership of the building.  To wit, the owner has the right to use, benefit from and dispose of his/her building, and exclude interferences from others to an extent permitted by laws and regulations.  Unless a change is made pursuant to a statutory procedure, the rights of a registered owner of a building is protected by law.  Therefore, the owner of a building as indicated in the first-time ownership registration of the building by the original registration agency may brought a revocation action against the registration agency or its superior agency for its disposition about the registration of the rights, be it an administrative disposition or a decision on administrative appeal, if it results in unfavorable changes, in order to cancel the regulatory effects of the unfavorable disposition or decision on administrative appeal.  Therefore, it can hardly be concluded that there is no need to protect such rights.

It was held in the original decision that, according to the results of this litigation, even if the decision on administrative appeal were set aside, the original state of ownership registration of the Plaintiff’s building at issue still could not be restored, and that the Appellant’s first instance complaint had lacked the necessity for rights protection.  Based on the foregoing reasons and due to the erroneous interpretation in the original decision, this Decision concluded that the original decision against the Appellant in the first instance trial on the above ground still had facts that should have been determined, had failed to conduct necessary evidentiary investigation and determination ex officio, and had violated laws and regulations for insufficiency of grounds.  Therefore, the original decision was reversed and remanded.