XTREME MERIDIAN SDN BHD v 1. ) TRIBUNAL TUNTUTAN PEMBELI RUMAH 2. ) Muhammad Hariz Bin Md Azman

Case Significance

Confirms the supervisory, non-appellate nature of judicial review over a Homebuyers Claims Tribunal award, declining to quash a decision founded on an undisputed technical report where no illegality, irrationality or procedural impropriety was shown.

This Court of Appeal decision concerns a judicial review arising out of a housing dispute before the Homebuyers Claims Tribunal (Tribunal Tuntutan Pembeli Rumah). The appellant, a housing developer of a condominium project, had applied to the High Court for judicial review of a Tribunal award in favour of a house buyer, and the High Court had dismissed that application with costs. The developer appealed to the Court of Appeal.

The buyer had entered into a Sale and Purchase Agreement with the developer to purchase a unit in the project, and the dispute concerned defects and the Defect Liability Period, including the developer's alleged failure to observe a non-rectification clause and its alleged failure to repair and rectify. Before the Tribunal, third-party expert evidence had been adduced, and there had been a finding on a technical point concerning the usage of a particular symbol.

The Court of Appeal reiterated that a court exercising judicial review exercises a supervisory, not an appellate, jurisdiction, so that its function was to examine the legality of the Tribunal's decision rather than to substitute its own view of the merits. On the material before it, including a Technical Report arising from a site verification at which the parties attended and the technical team examined the complaints, the court noted that the report provided credible evidence on which the Tribunal was entitled to rely, that the developer had not disputed the findings of the Technical Report, and had not offered any competing technical report of its own. The court concluded that the Tribunal had not committed any illegality, irrationality or procedural impropriety that would warrant quashing its decision, and that the High Court Judge had not been plainly wrong in agreeing with the Tribunal. Accordingly the Court of Appeal affirmed the decision below and dismissed the appeal, illustrating the limited supervisory role of judicial review over a specialist consumer tribunal's factual findings.