Arik Sanusi bin Yeop Johari

On the judicial record

A High Court judge whose reported corpus, largely in Bahasa Malaysia, decides civil disputes by rigorous application of the rules of evidence and proof, alongside land and criminal appeals.

Justice Arik Sanusi bin Yeop Johari sits in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and the reported decisions in this corpus are largely civil, tried and written substantially in Bahasa Malaysia, with a strong emphasis on the burden of proof and the assessment of evidence after full trial. Contract and government-procurement disputes recur, including the termination of a government contract on the ground of a conflict of interest, where the question was whether such a conflict arose because a consultant company appointed to assess tenderers shared a principal with a successful bidder.

Evidence and proof are a defining concern. Several judgments turn expressly on sections 101 and 102 of the Evidence Act 1950 and the principle that the plaintiff must prove its case on the balance of probabilities, with the burden lying on the party who asserts a fact — applied, for example, to a trespass and specific-performance claim over land transferred without the consent of an interested person, and to a defamation claim where the plaintiffs failed to call the relevant authority to prove that their reputation had been harmed.

Civil-procedure and land matters also feature, including a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19(1)(d) of the Rules of Court for failure to comply with a court direction to file pre-trial documents, and appeals against decisions of a statutory development authority. Criminal appeals appear as well — an appeal against a conviction under section 12(2) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 turning on whether the chain of evidence was broken and whether a 'fitting test' had been conducted on a sling bag, and appeals concerning sexual offences against children under section 376B of the Penal Code and section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017. The corpus reflects a High Court judge who decides disputes by rigorous application of the rules of evidence and proof.