KSS Timber Sdn Bhd v 1. ) PENGARAH JABATAN PERHUTANAN 2. ) Kerajaan Negeri Pahang

Case Significance

A companion forestry judicial review reaffirming that the doctrine of legitimate expectation requires a concrete representation or dealing by the deciding authority; without evidence of any promise by the Director of Forestry or the State, the challenge to the cancellation fails.

This decision of the High Court of Malaya at Temerloh is a companion judicial review, brought under Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012, by the same timber company, KSS Timber Sdn Bhd, against the Director of Forestry of Pahang and the State Government of Pahang, challenging a decision communicated by a letter dated 20 July 2023 (received in early August 2023) that cancelled an approval relating to the extraction of forest produce under the National Forestry Act 1984. As in the parallel application, the court began from the constitutional premise of administrative law: public bodies entrusted with the stewardship of the State's forest resources must act within the four corners of the law, yet the law should not obstruct those bodies in discharging their statutory functions, and the court's role is to keep that balance and to ensure that individuals are not oppressed by the exercise of public power, echoing the guidance of the Federal Court in Pengarah Tanah dan Galian, Wilayah Persekutuan v Sri Lempah Enterprise Sdn Bhd.

The applicant again invoked the doctrine of legitimate expectation, arguing that it had been led to expect that the approval to extract the forest produce would continue. The court traced the provenance and protection of legitimate expectation in administrative law, including its procedural and substantive strands, and concluded that the doctrine was of no assistance on the evidence. The applicant could not establish that it had dealt directly with either respondent, nor that either the Director of Forestry or the State Government had made any clear statement or representation about the approval on which an expectation could be grounded. In the absence of a representation capable of generating a protectable expectation, the applicant's challenge could not be sustained, and the court found no reviewable error in the respondents' decision. It accordingly dismissed the application for judicial review. The judgment underscores that a legitimate-expectation claim must be anchored in a concrete dealing or promise by the very authority whose decision is impugned.