P. SARASWATI A/P S. PERIASAMY v MALAYAN BANKING BERHAD

Case Significance

Restates that judicial review of an Industrial Court award is supervisory and corrects only illegality, irrationality or procedural impropriety, not the tribunal's evaluation of the evidence on the merits.

This High Court decision at Johor Bahru concerns an application for judicial review under Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012 seeking an order of certiorari to quash an Industrial Court award. The applicant, a former employee of the respondent bank who had been the Head of a Business Centre before her dismissal, sought to quash the award that had upheld her dismissal. The dismissal followed the bank's discovery, through its risk-management and audit units, of extensive irregularities in credit facilities totalling over RM95 million involving groups of companies under her management, with deficiencies in verification, scrutiny and the assessment of related-party transactions. The central questions were whether the application complied with the mandatory requirements of Order 53, and whether the Industrial Court had committed any jurisdictional error, error of law or procedural impropriety justifying judicial intervention. The court emphasised that the function of the High Court on judicial review is supervisory, not appellate: it may intervene only on grounds of illegality, irrationality or procedural impropriety, and cannot re-weigh evidence merely because the applicant disagrees with the Industrial Court's assessment, since whether the tribunal correctly evaluated the evidence goes to the merits rather than to legality. The record showed that the Industrial Court had engaged with the applicant's explanations, including her reliance on emails, grey-area parameters and vetting by superiors. The court found that the applicant had failed to comply with Order 53 rule 3(2), had failed to join the Industrial Court as a necessary party, and had not demonstrated any reviewable error of law in the award, agreeing that a long-serving officer in her position should have exercised greater care. It accordingly dismissed the amended judicial-review application with costs. The judgment is a useful restatement that judicial review of an Industrial Court award corrects legality, not merits. In dismissing the application, the court underscored that a long-serving officer entrusted with credit approval bears a heightened duty of care, and that any lapse exposing the bank to loss may properly be treated as gross misconduct.