Raub Mining & Development Company Sdn Bhd

On the court record

A corporate party in the Raub control dispute, whose matters cover the requirements for maintaining a private caveat, the mechanics of directors' retirement, and the containment of repeated and collateral litigation.

Raub Mining & Development Company Sdn Bhd appears in the corpus within a long-running family and corporate-control dispute connected to the Raub interests, and its appearances range across land-caveat, governance and abuse-of-process questions. In a High Court matter the company sought to maintain a private caveat under section 323 of the National Land Code, claiming a right of way based on long user, an oral understanding and access proceedings under section 390, the court holding that without a registered easement or registrable interest, and where the caveat's Form 19B failed to identify the affected access route, there was no serious issue to be tried and no balance of convenience justifying the caveat, which was removed.

The company also appears in the governance and interlocutory strands of the wider dispute. In a Court of Appeal matter the court addressed the deemed retirement of directors — whether a director due to retire by rotation can be deemed to have retired once the period for an annual general meeting has passed — warning that such an approach is inconsistent with shareholder democracy under sections 205 and 208 of the Companies Act 2016. In High Court matters the company featured in the enforcement of an undertaking in damages following the discharge of injunctions, and in striking-out proceedings under Order 18 rule 19 addressing res judicata, collateral attack and the abuse of process arising from a multiplicity of proceedings.

For a reader, the cluster is a study of how a protracted control dispute is fought across several fronts: the requirements for maintaining a private caveat, the mechanics of directors' retirement, and the doctrines that contain repeated and collateral litigation. The corporate parties are named as they appear on the record; the individual family members are referred to by their procedural role only. The company's appearances are best read as several fronts of a single protracted control dispute, and the courts' concern throughout is that each remedy be properly grounded: a private caveat requires a registrable interest and an accurately identified route, directors' retirement is tied to shareholder democracy, and the striking-out and vexatious-litigant powers stand ready to end collateral and repetitive litigation over subject matter already decided.