WASEEM YAQOOB S/O SHEIKH MUHAMMAD YAQOOB v 1. ) MAYBANK ISLAMIC BERHAD 2. ) RTL VISAGE SDN BHD

Case Significance

Illustrates the principle of coordinate jurisdiction: a litigant dissatisfied with a High Court order cannot collaterally attack it by a fresh originating summons in another High Court, but must pursue the appellate route, whatever the strength of the underlying grievance.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam concerns an attempt to use an originating summons to nullify an earlier order of the High Court itself. The plaintiff had brought an originating summons, invoking Order 42 and Order 92 rule 4 of the Rules of Court 2012, seeking to declare and set aside a High Court judgment made in 2018 in an earlier civil suit, by which land had been transferred back to the plaintiff on account of a fraudulent transaction while a charge over the land was declared valid. The plaintiff's real grievance lay with the paragraph of the earlier order that upheld the charge, which left the plaintiff in an awkward position. The first defendant, a bank, had earlier succeeded in striking out the originating summons as against it — a decision the court had already published in its earlier grounds — and the plaintiff then elected to proceed against the second defendant, a company in liquidation. The court held that the prayers in the originating summons sought to declare and set aside an order of a High Court of coordinate jurisdiction, and that it is settled law that one High Court cannot set aside the order of another High Court of coordinate jurisdiction; the proper route to challenge such an order is by appeal. On that footing the court dismissed the originating summons as against the second defendant, and in view of the circumstances and the second defendant's liquidation it made no order as to costs. Delivered by Noor Hayati binti Haji Mat J, the judgment is a useful illustration of the principle of coordinate jurisdiction: a litigant dissatisfied with a High Court order cannot collaterally attack it by a fresh originating summons in another High Court, however genuine the sense of grievance, but must pursue the appellate route.