10 Oct 2025
The court awarded the respondent full costs (including certificates for two senior counsel) because none of the appellant's grounds succeeded on appeal, the trial judge's legal error was unrelated to the respondent's acquittal, and there was no respondent conduct or handling of the appeal that wasted court time or justified partial costs; Lai Chee Ying (Costs) was distinguishable on its facts.
20 Nov 2024
The High Court held the magistrate applied an unduly narrow legal test by focusing only on whether the respondents personally committed prohibited acts; under Lo Kin‑man the correct inquiry includes whether accused persons, by their presence, conduct and items carried, facilitated, assisted or encouraged others to commit prohibited acts. The magistrate failed to adequately consider the totality of environmental evidence (location/time of arrests, flight/escape, attire, face coverings, items found) and thus her acquittals on counts 1–3 were legally unsound; the appeal was allowed and the acqui…
7 Jun 2024
The trial judge was entitled to conclude the CCTV footage and screenshots were sufficiently clear for identification when read with corroborating evidence (police testimony and post-arrest photographs); having rejected the appellants' explanations, the judge reasonably inferred from their conduct on the footage that they accompanied and encouraged the illegal assembly and possessed the requisite intent, therefore the convictions are safe and the appeal is dismissed.
3 Aug 2023
The Court of Appeal held the trial judge correctly found joint action and intent to treat the police shotgun as the appellant's for his purposes, properly applied Mo Kwong-Sang sentencing guidance given the involvement of a weapon and aggravating factors, and that the 7-year sentence for attempted robbery was not manifestly excessive; appeal dismissed.
2 Aug 2023
The Court accepted the trial judge's finding that the applicant deliberately attended the scene with intent to support the demonstrators and that, absent any rebuttal evidence, the conviction was properly supported; the appeal was not reasonably arguable and bail pending appeal was therefore refused.
28 Nov 2022
CCTV and circumstantial evidence established that the appellant intentionally joined and remained with a black‑clad group that obstructed the sushi shop’s operations; his presence, conduct and failure to leave while aware of the disruptive acts made it the only reasonable inference that he participated in the illegal assembly under s18 and the conviction is safe.
29 Sept 2022
Appeal against sentence was allowed because the sentencing judge potentially incorporated the assault on the police officer into the illegal assembly sentence (risk of double‑counting) and failed to address whether the appellant was properly to be treated as a joint participant in the attempted robbery based on the video evidence alone; those defects required leave to appeal and re‑consideration of sentence.
1 Sept 2022
The Court allowed the prosecution's appeal, holding that the trial judge erred in law by treating presence on the pavement as decisive and by applying a double standard to mask‑wearing; objectively the respondent's conduct (mask, location in the core area, lingering and route choice) gave rise to self‑invited suspicion, so the costs order in his favor was wrongly made and must be set aside.
19 Aug 2022
The conviction is upheld because the admitted facts and accepted police evidence established that the appellant stood at the forefront of a masked, agitated crowd for over an hour, actively shouted slogans and made gestures, ignored repeated statutory warnings to disperse, and was in circumstances (laser pointers, attempts to block the road, heightened tension) that would reasonably cause fear that the assembly would disturb public order; the magistrate's credibility findings and inference to guilt were logical and open on the evidence, and any additional reference to the joint criminal plan…
29 Jun 2022
The trial judge's factual findings on credibility and location were supported by videographic evidence and PW10's testimony and were not vitiated by legal error; the applicant was within the riot's core and her equipment and conduct supported conviction for riot and for using a face covering at an illegal assembly; moreover, presence (unless wholly fortuitous) satisfies s3(1)(a).