LHK PROPERTIES SDN BHD v 1. ) MENTERI PERUMAHAN DAN KERAJAAN TEMPATAN 2. ) PENGAWAL PERUMAHAN KEMENTERIAN PERUMAHAN DAN KERAJAAN TEMPATAN 3. ) IMPIAN EKSPRESI SDN BHD

Case Significance

Confirms the strictness of the Order 53 rule 3(6) time limit for judicial review: a purchaser cannot restart time by imposing its own deadline and treating silence as a fresh decision, and an unexplained delay is fatal to a leave application, depriving the court of jurisdiction.

This High Court decision at Kuala Lumpur concerns an application for leave to commence judicial review challenging extensions of time granted to a housing developer to deliver vacant possession, and it fails on the time bar in Order 53 rule 3(6) of the Rules of Court 2012. The applicant, a purchaser company, had bought a unit in the Pavilion Damansara Heights development under a sale and purchase agreement requiring vacant possession within 60 months, by February 2023. To overcome delays attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, the developer (the third respondent) had applied for and been granted five extensions of time by the Minister and the Housing Controller, the last permitting delivery by November 2025; vacant possession was in fact delivered in April 2025. In June 2025 the applicant sought leave to quash those extensions by certiorari, together with an extension of time to file out of the three-month period. The Attorney General's Chambers objected that the application was filed beyond the ninety-day period. The applicant argued that time ran only from the expiry of a fourteen-day deadline it had given the respondents to respond, after which it said the appeal was deemed rejected. The court rejected that argument, holding that an arbitrarily imposed timeline followed by a deemed refusal was insufficient to create a fresh decision, and that in any event the extensions had been granted on the developer's applications and the alleged deemed decision was not among the impugned decisions. The court further held that, although the applicant had included a prayer for an extension of time, its supporting affidavit gave no reasons at all to explain the delay, as required by Order 53 rule 3(7), a situation on all fours with the Court of Appeal authority it cited. Finding that the leave application was filed out of time with no explanation for the delay, the court held it had no jurisdiction to grant leave and dismissed the application with costs of RM3,000.