1. ) CHE GON BINTI CHE SAAD 2. ) RUSALINA BINTI AHMAD 3. ) RUZAIDI BIN AHMAD 4. ) ROSNANI BINTI AHMAD 5. ) RUSMANIZAM BIN AHMAD v 1. ) IBTIHAD BINTI MUSTAFA 2. ) MOHD ZAIN BIN IDRIS 3. ) MOHAMAD MASYA'AL BIN MOHAMAD RODZI 4. ) SAUBARIAH BINTI SENAPI

Case Significance

Illustrates the resilience of registered title against an asserted but unproven trust that the registered proprietor held the land for others, and the court's calibration of relief — granting possession while declining damages — where a genuine family dispute underlies the land claim.

This High Court decision at Sungai Petani concerns two consolidated suits between two branches of a family over the same piece of land. The plaintiffs in the first suit, the registered owners of the land, sought vacant possession of it; the opposing family members, plaintiffs in the second suit, claimed that the land had been transferred to the plaintiffs' late husband and father to be held by him on trust for their parents, so that it did not belong beneficially to the registered owners alone. The issues for trial were whether the land had indeed been transferred to the deceased to hold as trustee for himself and his siblings, and whether the claim asserting that trust was barred by limitation. Having tried the competing cases, the court preferred the registered owners' position. It allowed part of their claim and dismissed the rest, and dismissed the opposing family members' claim in its entirety. The court granted a declaration that the plaintiffs were the lawful registered owners of the land, and ordered the defendants to deliver vacant possession, demolishing or removing any structures they had erected on it within one year of the judgment. It declined, however, to grant the plaintiffs the further relief they sought — a declaration that the defendants were trespassers and an award of general, aggravated and exemplary damages — evidently regarding the family character of the long occupation as not warranting those additional remedies. The court's treatment of the trust claim reflected the strength that registered title carries and the difficulty of displacing it by an unproven assertion that the registered proprietor held the land for others. The judgment illustrates the resilience of registered title against an asserted trust that is not made out, and the calibration of relief where a genuine family dispute underlies a land claim.