BERJAYA REALTY SENDIRIAN BERHAD

On the court record

A corporate party in a protracted family and control dispute over the Raub interests, whose matters apply the vexatious-litigant jurisdiction, res judicata, striking out, and limits on a share lien.

BERJAYA REALTY SENDIRIAN BERHAD appears in the corpus within a long-running family and corporate-control dispute connected to the Raub mining and oil-mill interests, and its matters illustrate how the courts police the abuse of process that such feuds tend to generate. In one High Court matter the court addressed an application concerning a vexatious litigant, observing that the conduct in issue — the persistent pursuit of claims already decided and the proliferation of collateral proceedings — had significantly burdened the opposing parties and the judicial process, and that the law on vexatious litigants exists precisely to forestall such misuse, while noting that the liberties guaranteed by Articles 5 and 8 of the Federal Constitution must be exercised in accordance with law.

In a related striking-out matter under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012, the court considered whether a conspiracy claim was a collateral attack on earlier rulings barred by res judicata, whether the action was premature because it depended on the outcome of pending litigation, and whether the pleadings sufficiently particularised the elements of conspiracy, against a background of multiplicity of proceedings over the same subject matter. A further matter engaged company law directly, examining whether a lien could be exercised over fully paid-up shares under section 111 of the Companies Act 2016.

For a reader, the cluster is a useful map of the doctrines that contain protracted shareholder and family litigation: the vexatious-litigant jurisdiction, res judicata and the bar on collateral attack, striking out for abuse of process, and the limits on a company's lien over fully paid shares. The corporate parties are named as they appear on the record; the individual family members are referred to by their procedural role only. The cluster is a study in how the courts protect their own process from misuse: where a party pursues the same grievance through successive suits and collateral proceedings, the vexatious-litigant jurisdiction, res judicata and the striking-out power operate together to bring the litigation to an end, subject always to the constitutional guarantees of access to justice, which must nonetheless be exercised in accordance with law.