MANOGAR A/L M RAHMAN v KETUA PENGARAH PERTUBUHAN KESELAMATAN SOSIAL

Case Significance

Illustrates the exclusive jurisdiction of the medical board and appellate medical board to decide invalidity and disablement questions under sections 32, 33 and 83(3) of the Employees' Social Security Act 1969, the Social Security Appellate Board having no power to review those determinations.

This High Court decision is an appeal under the Employees' Social Security Act 1969 against a decision of the Social Security Appellate Board dismissing a claim for an invalidity pension, and it turns on the division of jurisdiction between that Board and the medical boards. The appellant, a container-lorry driver and an insured person under the Act, had made successive claims for an invalidity pension; his invalidity was referred to the medical board, which declined to certify it, and the appellate medical board upheld that view. His later claims were rejected, including on the ground of age, and his appeal to the Social Security Appellate Board was dismissed. On appeal to the High Court he contended that the medical board and appellate medical board had failed to evaluate his condition with due diligence, pointing to a spinal condition, surgery and a resulting permanent disability that left him wheelchair-bound, and argued that he met the statutory definition of invalidity. The court examined the statutory framework and held that the determination of an invalidity or disablement question is entrusted by section 32 to the medical board, with a right of appeal under section 33 to the appellate medical board, and that section 83(3) requires such a question to be decided by those boards; the Social Security Appellate Board has jurisdiction only over other issues and is precluded from deciding the invalidity question itself and from reviewing or disagreeing with the medical boards' determination. Because the appellant's real complaint was directed at the medical assessment of his invalidity, which lay outside the Board's jurisdiction, the Board had correctly declined to override the medical boards, and the court dismissed the appeal. The court observed that the statute channels invalidity and disablement questions to specialist medical determination precisely so that such clinical assessments are made by the boards equipped to make them, and that neither the Social Security Appellate Board nor, on an appeal confined to points of law, the court itself sits to re-open the medical merits of a certification the boards have already made. The judgment illustrates the exclusive role of the medical boards in deciding invalidity questions under the social-security scheme.