1. ) LOI JIA WEN 2. ) WONG WAI FOONG 3. ) HOOI JIA HAO NICKY 4. ) HOOI MUN YEE STELLA 5. ) TEE YEOW KING 6. ) QUEK SZE CHEONG 7. ) LOH TENG SHUI (menuntut untuk dirinya sendiri dan menurut Seksyen 7 Akta Undang-Undang Sivil 1956 sebagai bapa yang sah kepada si mati, ZECH LOH QI YI) 8. ) TAN EI EIN 9. ) LING MUNG SIANG (menuntut menurut Seksyen 7 Akta Undang-Undang Sivil 1956 sebagai suami yang sah kepada si mati, LIU PEI SI) 10. ) SITI ESAH BINTI HASSAN (menuntut menurut Seksyen 7 Akta Undang...

Case Significance

Confirms the limits of Order 14A of the Rules of Court 2012 in complex negligence litigation such as the Batang Kali landslide claims: where duty, breach, causation and limitation turn on disputed and interwoven facts, they cannot be decided summarily and must go to trial.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam arises out of the Batang Kali landslide and concerns whether central questions in a negligence claim against a former landowner can be determined summarily under Order 14A of the Rules of Court 2012, or whether they require a full trial. The plaintiffs are survivors and the dependants of those killed in the landslide at a campsite, many suing under section 7 of the Civil Law Act 1956 as the lawful family members of deceased victims. They allege negligence against, among others, the defendant that was the former registered proprietor of the land. The defendant applied under Order 14A and Order 33 rule 2 for the court to determine, as questions of law, whether it owed a duty of care, whether any duty was breached, whether there was a break in the chain of causation, and whether the claim was time-barred. The court held that these questions could not be answered summarily. Applying the principle that Order 14A may be resorted to only where the material facts are not in dispute, and that it is undesirable to split legal and factual determinations where issues of fact are interwoven with the law, the court found that the three-fold test of foreseeability, proximity and policy considerations was dependent on the facts, as was the question of breach and the scope of any duty. Questions about the extent of the former landowner's knowledge, consent or participation in the development of the campsite land before it relinquished ownership, and what a landowner may lawfully turn a blind eye to as a matter of policy, were premature to decide. The limitation question was also fact-dependent, because the timing of the damage — including a contention of latent damage to the slope since 2018 — could not be fixed with certainty at this stage. The court held that these matters were best left for trial and dismissed the application with costs in the cause.