1. ) ONG PHAIK KOOI 2. ) LAW WEY ANN v 1. ) TRIBUNAL PERUMAHAN DAN PENGURUSAN STRATA 2. ) AMBER COURT MANAGEMENT CORPORATION

Case Significance

Illustrates the limited role of judicial review over a specialist tribunal's award, confined to illegality and irrationality, and the scope of a management corporation's power under the Strata Management Act 2013 to levy charges, including interest on late payment under section 60(3)(c).

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur, on the special-powers side, concerns an application for judicial review of a decision of the Strata Management Tribunal. The applicants, parcel owners, challenged a tribunal award of May 2023 that had allowed the management corporation's claims for various sums, seeking certiorari to quash it. Their principal complaint was that the award was ultra vires the Strata Management Act 2013: they argued that the charges a management corporation may impose under the Act are confined to maintenance charges and contributions to the sinking fund, and that the tribunal had exceeded that power in allowing claims for miscellaneous items such as insurance premiums, sanitary charges and quit rent, as well as arrears of maintenance charges said to have been fixed by reference to floor area and not tabled before the annual general meeting. The court examined the tribunal's award against the standard grounds of judicial review, namely illegality and irrationality. It was satisfied that the tribunal had acted within its powers and had grounded its decision in the relevant provisions of the Act and in the documents before it, including, for the late-payment charges, section 60(3)(c), which permits the management corporation to impose interest for late payment. It found the tribunal's reasoning free of illegality or irrationality. Because the applicants had not shown that the award merited judicial review, the court dismissed the application with costs of RM5,000. The court's approach shows that a challenge to a tribunal's award cannot be turned into a fresh hearing on the merits: the applicant must identify a recognised public-law error, and dissatisfaction with the charges allowed, without such an error, does not warrant certiorari; the range of sums a management corporation may recover is a matter of statutory construction the tribunal is entitled to decide. The judgment is a useful illustration of the limited role of judicial review over a specialist tribunal's award and of the scope of a management corporation's power to levy charges under the Strata Management Act 2013.