Abdul Rahman bin Sebli

On the judicial record

A Federal Court judge whose reported corpus settles apex-level questions across defamation, motor-insurance liability, stamp duty, land and the regulation of the legal profession.

Justice Abdul Rahman bin Sebli sits in the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan), Malaysia's apex court, and the reported decisions in this corpus concentrate on questions of general legal importance across defamation, insurance, revenue, land and the regulation of the legal profession. A significant defamation decision examines whether reportage is in law a separate defence from qualified privilege or the Reynolds defence of responsible journalism, and whether those defences are mutually exclusive — a question of principle for media law.

Insurance law features prominently through a group of decisions on third-party motor insurance and the effect of a failure to register a change of ownership of a vehicle under section 13(1) of the Road Transport Act 1987, and whether that failure operates to exclude or limit an insurer's liability to a third party who has obtained judgment. Revenue law appears in an appeal on whether an asset-purchase agreement was a conveyance on sale within the meaning of section 21(1) of the Stamp Act 1949 and therefore dutiable.

Land law and property questions recur, including a dispute over property held without title where a purchaser had been appointed the owner's attorney under a registered power of attorney. The regulation of the legal profession is engaged in an appeal concerning the procedure by which a member of the Malaysian Bar may move, under section 64(6) of the Legal Profession Act 1976, for the Bar to lodge a complaint against an advocate and solicitor. Bankruptcy questions also arise, such as the position where a money judgment has multiple petitioning creditors and the debt is paid to one of them, and whether that creditor should then be removed as a party to the proceedings. Legal professional privilege is examined too, including whether a breach of solicitor-client privilege gives rise to a cause of action to restrain the use of privileged documents. The decisions reflect the work of an apex-court judge resolving contested points across several fields for the guidance of the courts below, where the outcome fixes the governing rule rather than merely disposing of the parties' dispute.