WONG SIAH KUAN v 1. ) LOW JEN HAE 2. ) Tenaga Nasional Berhad

Case Significance

Illustrates the thirty-day time bar under Order 42 rule 13 of the Rules of Court 2012 for setting aside an order and the functus officio principle, which bars a court from reopening a final order it has already made striking out a claim.

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur concerns a plaintiff's application to set aside an earlier order of the court which had struck off her claim without liberty to file afresh. The plaintiff owned a commercial property and had an electricity supply account with the second defendant, Tenaga Nasional Berhad, for those premises, which she had also let to the first defendant under a tenancy agreement. After the underlying claim was struck off on 19 February 2025 on the second defendant's application, the plaintiff applied by Enclosure 64 to set that order aside. The second defendant raised two preliminary objections: first, that the setting-aside application had been filed out of the thirty-day period stipulated under Order 42 rule 13 of the Rules of Court 2012; and secondly, that the court was functus officio, having already disposed of the matter by a final order, so that it no longer had jurisdiction to revisit its own decision. The court analysed both objections. It accepted that the application fell outside the time limited by Order 42 rule 13 and that, the striking-off order being a final determination, the court had become functus officio and could not set aside its own order in these circumstances. The court also observed that the case-management regime allows the court to set timeframes and give directions and to impose sanctions for non-compliance, which underlay the original striking-off. Concluding that the objections were well founded, the court dismissed Enclosure 64 with costs. The judgment is a useful illustration of the time bar under Order 42 rule 13 for setting aside an order and of the functus officio principle, which prevents a court from reopening a final order it has already made. The court noted that the finality attaching to a striking-off order made without liberty to file afresh is precisely what the functus officio doctrine protects, and that a party aggrieved by such an order must pursue an appeal within time rather than invite the same court to revisit a matter it has already concluded.