1. ) Mohd Aiman bin Halim 2. ) Abdul Khalib bin Abdullah v Muhammad Khairul Asyraf bin Abdullah

Case Significance

Illustrates appellate variation of the apportionment of liability in a fatal running-down case, the High Court re-apportioning fault to 50:50 while deferring to the Sessions Court's assessment of damages, which disclosed no appealable error.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is an appeal from the Sessions Court in a fatal road-accident claim, concerning both liability and the quantum of damages. The respondent had sued for himself and as the husband and dependant of a woman who died in the accident, and the Sessions Court had found the appellants, who were the defendants, 90% liable, with the deceased's side 10% contributorily liable, and had assessed damages. The appellants appealed against both the apportionment of liability and the quantum. A feature of the appeal was that no written grounds of judgment of the Sessions Court were available, so the appellate court had to work from the record, the evidence and the assessment as it appeared. On liability, the issue was whether the Sessions Court had made a plain error in apportioning fault as it did, given the conflicting testimonies of the witnesses as to how the collision occurred. On quantum, the issue was whether the damages awarded were appropriate. The court reviewed the evidence and concluded that the apportionment of liability should be varied, holding that fault was more properly shared equally, and it apportioned liability at 50:50. As to quantum, it found no appealable error in the Sessions Court's assessment of damages, which had turned on the judge's evaluation of the witness testimony, and it left that assessment undisturbed. The appeal was accordingly allowed in part, the apportionment being varied to 50:50 while the judgment of the Sessions Court was otherwise affirmed, with costs of RM8,000 to the respondent. The judgment is a useful illustration of appellate variation of the apportionment of liability in a running-down case while deferring to the trial court's assessment of damages. The judgment also illustrates the different levels of appellate scrutiny applied to findings of liability and to the assessment of damages: an apportionment of fault founded on conflicting accounts of the collision may be revisited where the appellate court considers it plainly wrong, whereas a damages assessment resting on the trial judge's evaluation of the evidence will ordinarily be left intact absent a demonstrated error.