MTRUSTEE BERHAD (yang dahulunya dikenali sebagai AmTrustee Berhad) (sebagai pemegang amanah untuk Hektar Real Estate Investment Trust) v TASHIMA DEVELOPMENT SDN BHD

Case Significance

A companion execution appeal reaffirming that a judgment debtor summons is confined to examining a corporate debtor's present means under the Order 48 safeguards and cannot be used to obtain historical bank records as an asset-tracing exercise.

This High Court decision at Muar is one of three consolidated execution appeals decided together, in which a judgment creditor challenged a Senior Assistant Registrar's refusal of its application to compel production of a corporate judgment debtor's historical bank records. The creditor, MTrustee Berhad — formerly AmTrustee Berhad, suing in its capacity as trustee for a real estate investment trust — was seeking to enforce a judgment against the debtor company through the judgment debtor summons procedure. Before the summons hearing commenced, the creditor made an oral application asking that the debtor produce its bank accounts for previous years. The Senior Assistant Registrar dismissed that application, and the creditor's appeal turned on whether it had complied with the requirements of Order 48 rule 1(2) of the Rules of Court 2012 for examining a corporate debtor — namely, obtaining leave to issue a judgment debtor summons against an officer of the company and leave for that officer to produce the relevant documents. A further question was whether the material sought went beyond the legitimate scope of the procedure by amounting to an asset-tracing exercise or a historical assessment of how monies had been spent, rather than an inquiry into the debtor's current ability to satisfy the judgment. The Court considered the purpose of the judgment debtor summons and the extent of its inherent flexibility, and concluded that the Senior Assistant Registrar had been correct to refuse the application. It upheld that decision and dismissed the creditor's three appeals with costs. The decision reinforces that the judgment debtor summons is directed at ascertaining a debtor's means and is subject to the procedural safeguards of Order 48. The Court emphasised that permitting production of years of historical statements would transform the summons into a general investigative or tracing tool, which is not its function, and it found no error in the Registrar's exercise of discretion that would justify appellate interference in any of the three appeals.