CHAN LENNON (berniaga sebagai OMG LUXURY TRADING) v TAN HUEY ZI (berniaga sebagai OMG LUXURY TRADING)

Case Significance

Illustrates the calibrated approach to interlocutory discovery under Order 24: an appellate court examines each category of documents against the pleaded issues and the facts, ordering production of genuinely relevant material while declining a broader trawl, and reflects a split result in a neutral costs order.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is an appeal about the proper scope of documentary discovery, arising from a commercial dispute between two individuals who both traded under the same business name. In the underlying Sessions Court action a plaintiff had sued the appellant (the first defendant below) and the respondent (the second defendant below), and the Sessions Court had allowed the respondent's application under Order 24 of the Rules of Court 2012 for discovery of documents in the form of the appellant's bank statements. The appellant appealed against that discovery order. The application in substance sought two distinct sets of material: the appellant's bank statement for November 2022, and a further set of the appellant's bank statements for a defined period.

The court approached the appeal on the footing that discovery must be tied to the specific factual matrix of the case rather than granted at large. It reviewed the authorities on the discovery of documents, accepting that they had correctly applied the governing principles to their own facts, and stressed that the resolution of the present appeal had likewise to be grounded in the particular circumstances before it. On that basis the court differentiated between the categories of documents sought, allowing the appeal in part rather than either upholding or setting aside the discovery order wholesale.

Because the appellant succeeded only partially, the court made no order as to the costs of the appeal, and it left undisturbed the order for costs of RM2,000 that the Sessions Court had imposed against the appellant. The judgment illustrates the calibrated approach to interlocutory discovery: an appellate court will examine each category of documents against the pleaded issues and the facts, granting production of what is genuinely relevant while declining a broader trawl, and it will reflect a split outcome in a neutral costs order.