KOPERASI PERMODALAN FELDA MALAYSIA BERHAD v IMEJ PARKING SDN BHD

Case Significance

Illustrates how the certificate-of-fitness duty under the Factories and Machineries Act 1967 is allocated between a building owner and a parking operator — primary duty on the operator, secondary liability on the owner under section 50(3) — and appellate restraint absent error.

This Court of Appeal decision, one of two cross-appeals heard together, concerns a contractual dispute over parking rental and the allocation of the statutory duty to obtain a certificate of fitness for parking machinery under the Factories and Machineries Act 1967. The dispute was between a cooperative that owned a building and a company that operated the parking space within it. This appeal was brought by the building-owner cooperative against the trial court's decision. Both parties are corporate or cooperative entities and are named. The claims included a claim for the excess payment of parking rental — turning on whether the correct method of calculating the rental had been used — and a claim for loss of profit attributable to parking bays operated without the requisite licence or certification.

A central legal question was who bore the duty to obtain and maintain a certificate of fitness for the parking equipment: the owner of the building or the company operating the parking space. The court analysed the scheme of the Factories and Machineries Act 1967 — including sections 3, 19, 21, 40(3) and 50 — and Regulation 10 of the Factories and Machinery (Notification, Certificate of Fitness and Inspection) Regulations 1970. It reasoned that the operator, having day-to-day charge of the equipment, is placed to provide the information required for inspection and certification, while the owner retains only a secondary liability under section 50(3), which is engaged if it knowingly permits operation without proper certification.

The court noted that the question of secondary liability did not, on the facts, arise for decision, because there were no enforcement issues against any party before the trial court, and that its view on the certification duty did not alter the outcome of the appeal in a way favourable to the cooperative's pleaded claim. Finding no reason to reverse the trial judge's findings, it held that no appellate intervention was required. The judgment is a useful illustration of how the courts allocate the certificate-of-fitness duty under the Factories and Machineries Act 1967 between a building owner and a parking operator, and of the restraint an appellate court shows where the challenged findings disclose no error.