NG KIN SONG@NG THIAN SONG v 1. ) Individu Tidak Diketahui (Menyemarakkan Identiti Yeoh Ah Guan Dan Mendakwa Memegang Ic No. 2. ) GEETHA CHELVI A/P PANIR SELVAM 3. ) Meera Bai Ruben A/p Ruben Saktiraj Murty (750330105589) Dan S.p. Visa Letchumy A/p Salva Pathy 4. ) Ketua Pengarah Insolvensi Bagi Harta Abdul Malek Bin Mohamad Nor (Bankrap) 5. ) Ketua Pengarah Insolvensi Bagi Harta Dato' Abd Aziz Bin Mohd Nor (Bankrap) 6. ) TETUAN MALEK & ASSOCIATES 7. ) Akan Dinamakan ( Kerani Kaunter Kemasukan...

Case Significance

Illustrates the accountability of the land administration where its officers' breaches of statutory duty enable a fraudulent transfer of registered land: the Director of Lands and Mines and the State were held vicariously liable, and naming the Director sufficed where the individual clerks' identities were withheld.

This decision of the High Court of Malaya at Shah Alam concerns a claim by a registered landowner arising from the fraudulent transfer of his land engineered by an impostor who had assumed the identity of another person. The plaintiff sued a range of defendants, including the unknown impostor, solicitors and estate administrators said to have been involved in the impugned dealings, and — importantly for the outcome — officers of the Klang Land Office (a counter clerk and a data-entry clerk) together with the Director of Lands and Mines of Selangor and the State. The claim was framed in breach of statutory duty and breach of a common-law duty, and engaged the statutory immunity under section 22 of the National Land Code and the provisions of the Government Proceedings Act 1956 governing suits against public officers and the Government.

A procedural obstacle was the plaintiff's inability to name the individual land-office clerks, whose identities the relevant defendants had actively withheld; the court accepted that the plaintiff had made all reasonable and diligent efforts to ascertain them and held that it was sufficient to name the Director of Lands and Mines as a party, and that the defendants could not depart from their pleaded defence at the submission stage after trial by disputing that point. On the substance, the court found that the land-office officers had breached the statutory duties incumbent on them in processing the fraudulent transfer, and ruled that the Director of Lands and Mines and the State were vicariously liable for those breaches, negligent acts and omissions. Concluding that this was a fit and proper case for the plaintiff's claim to succeed against the land-authority defendants, the court allowed the claim against them. The judgment illustrates the accountability of the land administration where its officers' failures enable a fraudulent dealing with registered land.