Universiti Malaya

On the court record

A public university litigating the judicial review of an academic appointment, medical-records and negligence matters, and a Federal Court question on the "other steps" bar to a stay for arbitration under section 10(1) of the Arbitration Act 2005.

Universiti Malaya (the University of Malaya) is a public university, and it appears in the corpus in a varied set of disputes reflecting its institutional life — the judicial review of an academic appointment, medical-records and medical-negligence matters connected to its teaching hospital, and a significant arbitration question. It appears as respondent, aggrieved party and appellant across the High Court, Court of Appeal and Federal Court.

Administrative and employment matters feature. In one judicial review an applicant sought to quash the university's decision to terminate an appointment as Dean of the Medical Faculty, where the decision-maker had a discretion to terminate the appointment at any time, the court finding insufficient grounds to give rise to a legitimate expectation. In a civil-procedure matter arising from a medical claim, the university sought to have limitation, fraudulent concealment and injury determined as preliminary issues under Order 33 rule 2 of the Rules of Court 2012, raising whether those were pure questions of law or whether they involved disputed facts and expert medical evidence unsuitable for preliminary determination.

The arbitration strand is the most doctrinally significant. In an appeal that reached the Federal Court, and in a related Court of Appeal matter, the question was the interpretation of section 10(1) of the Arbitration Act 2005 and, in particular, the phrase "before taking any other steps in the proceedings" — whether a party seeking a stay of court proceedings in favour of arbitration had, by its conduct, taken "other steps" that amounted to a waiver of its right to a stay, or had made an unequivocal and timely election to arbitrate. This is a recurring and important question about how a party preserves its right to arbitrate without submitting to the court's jurisdiction. A further matter concerned an application to obtain medical records under the private-healthcare regulations. The university's footprint spans academic governance, the law of arbitration and the litigation generated by its medical services.