Lee Wan Kwee & 4 Lagi v Pentadbir Tanah dan Daerah PENCELAH WEST COST EXPRESSWAY SDN BHD

Case Significance

Confirms that the time limits governing land references under the Land Acquisition Act 1960 are mandatory and jurisdictional: a landowner who fails to comply with the section 38(5) timeframe loses the right to have compensation reassessed, whatever the merits of the quantum complaint.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam concerns a group of land references arising from a compulsory acquisition, and it turns on whether the statutory time limit for lodging a land reference is mandatory and jurisdictional. The applicants, five landowners, were dissatisfied with the compensation awarded for the acquisition of land in Mukim Kapar, Daerah Klang, under the Land Acquisition Act 1960, and they pursued land references to have the compensation reassessed. A road-concession company that would ultimately bear the compensation intervened in the proceedings. The central legal question concerned the effect of the timeframe imposed by section 38 of the Act — in particular whether the word "shall" in section 38(5) should be construed as mandatory or merely directory, and how non-compliance affected the court's jurisdiction to hear the reference.

The court held that the timeframe prescribed by section 38(5) is mandatory and goes to jurisdiction. It reasoned that treating the temporal limitation as merely directory would render it insignificant and undermine the legislative intent of ensuring efficiency and finality in land-reference proceedings; a directory reading could produce excessive delay and significantly burden the paymaster who must fund any increased award. Because the applicants had failed to comply with the timeframe mandated by section 38(5), the court concluded that it lacked the jurisdiction to hear the land reference.

The court struck out the case for want of jurisdiction, with costs of RM2,000. It emphasised that a jurisdictional time bar cannot be waived or excused by the court's discretion in the way a mere procedural irregularity might be: once the statutory period has passed, the court is simply without power to entertain the reference, and considerations of the merits or of hardship to the landowner cannot revive a jurisdiction that no longer exists. The judgment illustrates that the time limits governing land references under the Land Acquisition Act 1960 are strict, mandatory and jurisdictional: a landowner who does not lodge or pursue a reference within the statutory period loses the right to have the compensation reassessed, however meritorious the underlying complaint about quantum might be.