MUSARAT @ MUSARAT BIBI BINTI SHEIKH ABDULLAH v EMMANUEL BENSON BIN ABDULLAH

Case Significance

Illustrates the use of Order 18 rule 19 striking-out to dispose of a money claim that is time-barred on the face of the pleadings under section 6(1) of the Limitation Act 1953, without a trial.

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur turns on a striking-out application and the effect of the limitation period on a stale money claim. The plaintiff, the defendant's former wife, sued her ex-husband to recover what she described as friendly loans advanced to him while the couple were still married. On the pleaded facts the loans totalled RM1.7 million, were said to have been given between 2010 and 2016 partly to activate a company in which the defendant was a director and partly to settle debts owed to moneylenders, and were later reduced by repayments of RM476,000 by 2024. The claim also touched on instalments and repossession arrears the plaintiff had to bear for a company vehicle after the parties divorced in 2016.

The defendant did not meet the claim on its merits. Instead he applied under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012 to strike the action out, invoking the grounds that a pleading may be struck where it discloses no reasonable cause of action, is scandalous, frivolous or vexatious, or is otherwise an abuse of the process of the court. The court reasoned that, because the loans were pleaded as having been advanced no later than 2016, the six-year limitation period fixed by section 6(1) of the Limitation Act 1953 for actions founded on contract had already expired by the time the writ was filed. A claim that is plainly out of time is, in the court's words, "time barred and therefore obviously unsustainable," and so falls squarely within the striking-out jurisdiction rather than requiring a full trial.

The court accordingly allowed the striking-out application and ordered costs of RM7,000 against the plaintiff. The judgment is a compact illustration of how the limitation bar can be deployed at the interlocutory stage: where the face of the pleadings shows the cause of action accrued outside the statutory window, the action can be terminated summarily without the court hearing evidence.