PUTRAJAYA — Joint management bodies (JMBs) cannot bar owners from their own units over unpaid maintenance charges, the Court of Appeal has ruled, news outlet Free Malaysia Today reported.

The regulations let a JMB deactivate defaulters’ access cards, require them to sign a register when seeking help to enter or leave the building, and suspend their use of common facilities and services, but the court found nothing in them that lets a JMB keep an owner out of his or her own unit.

“The sanction it authorises is an inconvenience and a record. It presupposes entry. It does not authorise exclusion,” Justice Ong Chee Kwan, who delivered the broad grounds, was quoted as saying in court yesterday.

The ruling came in an appeal by SL Land Sdn Bhd and Foong Wei Ching against the JMB managing the Sentral Bazar shopping mall in Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, which had refused to let the company’s directors and authorised agents into their units.

The three-member bench chaired by Datuk Alwi Abdul Wahab, with Datuk Shahnaz Sulaiman and Ong, unanimously allowed the appeal.

The court set aside a High Court ruling that had upheld the JMB’s power to impose conditions on entry by defaulters under the Strata Management (Maintenance and Management) Regulations 2015.

Ong said barring an owner from entering his or her own unit was a far more drastic step than the measures specified in the regulations and interfered with the owner’s right to use and enjoy the property.

He said clear legal provisions would be needed to confer such a power, but none existed.