SKS FOAM (M) SDN BHD (dalam penggulungan) v SKS INTEGRATED GROUP SDN BHD

Case Significance

Illustrates that a party who persistently and without reasonable cause pursues repeated merit-indifferent applications and appeals on finally-determined issues may be declared a vexatious litigant and restrained under paragraph 17 of the Schedule to the Courts of Judicature Act 1964.

This High Court decision concerns an application to declare a party a vexatious litigant under the additional power of the High Court in paragraph 17 of the Schedule to the Courts of Judicature Act 1964. The plaintiff, a company in liquidation, applied for an order restraining the defendant company from instituting further legal proceedings without the leave of a judge, on the ground that the defendant had habitually and persistently, and without reasonable cause, pursued vexatious litigation. The court set out the recognised features of a vexatious litigant drawn from authority, including the hallmark of suing the same party repeatedly in reliance on essentially the same cause of action after it has been ruled upon, automatically challenging every adverse decision on appeal, and refusing to give effect to orders of the court, thereby imposing on the opposing party the burden of resisting claim after claim. Examining the defendant's conduct, the court found that it had filed applications to strike out, to stay proceedings or execution, appeals to the Court of Appeal and similar interim relief whenever such an avenue was procedurally open, regardless of the merits, and that repeated applications for leave to commence fresh actions were premised on issues that had already been finally determined. The court concluded that this demonstrated a sustained and deliberate pattern of vexatious litigation, weaponised to obstruct the plaintiff's liquidation through continuous and reflexive procedural filings and appeals. It allowed the application, dismissed the defendant's cross-application to strike it out, awarded global costs of RM20,000.00, and confined the restraining order to litigation related to the property in question, with no retrospective effect. The judgment illustrates when persistent, merit-indifferent litigation crosses into vexatiousness warranting a restraint under the Courts of Judicature Act 1964. The court's approach shows that the vexatious-litigant jurisdiction is engaged not by a single unmeritorious application but by a settled pattern of abusive litigation, and that the restraint imposed is calibrated — here confined to litigation touching the property and denied retrospective effect — so as to curb the abuse without shutting the litigant out of the courts altogether.