PACIFIC TRUSTEES BERHAD

On the court record

Illustrates how a corporate trustee's dealings with trust funds are tested, and how the rules on without-prejudice privilege and the summary-judgment threshold shape the litigation.

Pacific Trustees Berhad appears in the reported judgments as a corporate trustee named as a party in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), in matters concerning the release of trust funds, the admissibility of privileged communications and summary judgment. The decisions show a trustee at the centre of disputes over its handling of trust monies and the evidential rules that govern the litigation.

In one decision the trustee was a defendant to an originating summons commenced under a liberty-to-apply clause in a court consent order, where the plaintiff sought the release of trust-account funds in connection with the restructuring of an interest scheme. The questions were whether the trustee had to release the funds for the claims made, whether it had rejected the claims on legitimate grounds, and whether the plaintiff's claims were unsupported or unrelated to the restructuring exercise. Those issues go to the core of a trustee's function — the duty to deal with trust funds according to the trust's terms, and the protection a trustee has in declining a claim it regards as unfounded.

A second decision concerned the admissibility of without-prejudice communications under section 23 of the Evidence Act 1950, where the court considered whether any exception applied, whether the communications disclosed an unambiguous impropriety — a high threshold requiring the impropriety to be clear on the face of the communication — and whether the privilege was maintained, holding that the threshold was not met and the privilege preserved. A third matter engaged the trustee as a defendant to a summary-judgment application under Order 14, considering whether a failure to undertake a mandatory mediation process before filing suit and a defence of an injunction from another court prohibiting payment constituted triable issues. Across the decisions, the trustee illustrates how a corporate trustee's dealings with trust funds are tested, and how the evidential rules on privilege and the summary-judgment threshold shape the resulting litigation.