1. ) Kerajaan Malaysia 2. ) KEMENTERIAN KESIHATAN MALAYSIA v 1. ) Dr Vijaendreh A/P Subramaniam 2. ) Dr Che Amir Farid Bin Che Isahak

Case Significance

Significant for its treatment of the limits of declaratory relief and the separation of powers: the Federal Court dismissed the Government's appeal and upheld the Court of Appeal, declining to answer most of the leave questions and resolving the matter on the tenability of the declarations sought rather than pronouncing broadly on the interpretation of the Poisons Act 1952 and related legislation.

This Federal Court decision, delivered in a judgment of the court by Chief Justice Tengku Maimun binti Tuan Mat (sitting with Nallini Pathmanathan and Nordin bin Hassan FCJJ), concerns the interpretation of the legislation governing the dispensing of medicines and the constitutional limits on the declarations a court may grant. The appellants were the Government of Malaysia and the Ministry of Health; the respondents were two registered medical practitioners. The core issue was the interpretation of provisions of the Poisons Act 1952 and the Poisons Regulations 1952, together with the Sale of Drugs Act 1952 and the Control of Drugs and Cosmetics Regulations 1984, in the context of the asserted vested right of registered and professionally trained medical practitioners to dispense medicine. A connected issue was whether the declarations sought were legally tenable and could be granted consistently with the doctrine of separation of powers, or whether granting them would amount to judicial interference with executive and legislative policy.

The Federal Court dismissed the appeal. Leave had been granted on six questions, but the court, for the reasons it gave, declined to answer Leave Questions 2 to 6, resolving the appeal on the tenability of the declarations sought and the separation-of-powers concern rather than by pronouncing broadly on each question. It upheld the judgment of the Court of Appeal, including the order that court had already made in respect of costs. Recognising that the litigation concerned significant public interests, the Federal Court made no order as to costs in respect of the proceedings before it. The judgment is significant for its treatment of the limits of declaratory relief where the declarations sought would trench upon executive and legislative policy, and for its careful confinement of the decision to the questions that were necessary to dispose of the appeal, an approach that reflects the court's reluctance to lay down expansive statements of principle beyond what the case before it requires.