Stopping Apartment Construction Without Building Public Facilities... Supreme Court Rules "No Gratuitous Accession"

The Supreme Court has ruled that local governments cannot receive public facility sites free of charge in places where apartment construction projects have been halted.

The Supreme Court's First Division (Presiding Justice No Tae-ak) overturned the lower court's ruling in favor of the plaintiff in the ownership transfer registration lawsuit filed by Cheonan City against Construction Company A, and remanded the case to the Daejeon High Court, the court announced on the 20th.

Company A received approval for a housing construction project to build three apartment complexes from Cheonan City in May 2004, which included plans to establish and develop public facilities such as public roads, green spaces, and parks. Company A completed the apartments in 2007 and obtained usage inspections for each building, but failed to construct the public facilities and halted the project. Consequently, Cheonan City filed a lawsuit against Company A for ownership transfer registration concerning the land designated for public facilities.

The first and second instance courts ruled that the land in question would revert to Cheonan City free of charge and that Company A must transfer ownership. This judgment was based on the National Land Planning Act, which states that the public facilities newly installed by the permit holder and the land on which they are built revert free of charge to the managing authority after passing the completion inspection.

However, the Supreme Court held that "it is reasonable to consider that ownership of the land and facilities constituting the public facilities reverts to the managing authority only when the project entity has actually installed the public facilities and the project has been completed with a completion inspection," and "if the project entity has not installed the public facilities within the project area and the project has been halted, only the land where the public facilities were planned cannot be considered to have reverted free of charge to the managing authority."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.