1. ) DAIRYAR A/L KHATAN MUTHU 2. ) DEWANA A/P TARA SINGH 3. ) KUMARAN A/L DAIRYAR v STANDARD CHARTERED SAADIQ BERHAD

Case Significance

Applies sections 6 and 6A of the Limitation Act 1953 to strike out a claim as time-barred and obviously unsustainable, where the plaintiffs had knowledge of the relevant facts years before commencing the action and were bound by an earlier court order.

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur concerns the striking out, under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012, of a family's claim against an Islamic bank as obviously unsustainable and, in any event, time-barred under the Limitation Act 1953. The plaintiffs, members of the same family, had purchased a property and their dispute with the bank arose from earlier proceedings between the same parties, in which court orders, including a consent order, had been made. The bank applied to strike out the claim, relying on the contemporaneous documents and the earlier court orders.

The court analysed the limitation position closely. Under section 6(1)(a) of the Limitation Act 1953, contractual and tortious claims must be brought within six years of the accrual of the cause of action. For a claim in negligence not involving personal injury, section 6A extends the life of the cause of action by reference to a three-year period running from the "starting date", which is the earliest date on which the plaintiff had both the knowledge required to bring the action and a right to bring it. The court traced the chronology and found that the plaintiffs were bound by, and had knowledge of, the earlier consent order at the latest by a date in late 2016, so that any cause of action in contract and tort became time-barred by the corresponding date in 2022.

Even giving the plaintiffs the maximum benefit of the doubt by treating a later date in 2020, when they filed papers in bankruptcy proceedings referring to the relevant matters, as the starting date, the court found that the three-year extension under section 6A would still have expired before the action was commenced. Because the plaintiffs were bound by the earlier order and had suffered no recoverable loss, and because the claim was in any event time-barred, the court held it obviously unsustainable and allowed the striking-out application. The judgment is a clear application of the limitation regime in sections 6 and 6A of the Limitation Act 1953 to strike out a stale and unsustainable claim.