TO HEAR OR NOT TO HEAR

The recent circular issued by the Chief Judge of Malaya directing that all Order 14 and Order 18 rule 19 applications are to be heard by the Judge from the 1.7.2008 certainly took many by surprise. While pondering about the wisdom of this directive, I was also wondering whether a staggered approach would have been more suited as there must have been some cases where the arguments were part heard.

A good move?

Order 14 and Order 18 rule 19 applications more often than not are characterised by voluminous affidavits, multiple adjournments and lengthy written submissions. On average, an application on this first tier can take from start to finish, about 9 months to be disposed off. There are of course, shorter or longer periods depending on the complexity of the matter, the status of the Court diary and the personality of your opponent.

So if this initiative succeeds in shaving off about 9 months from the duration of a litigation matter, it is most welcome. However, I wondered whether the removal of this first tier, would prejudice litigants? I don’t think so but any views to the contrary are certainly welcome.

It is a common lament amongst the lawyers that the administration of the Court Registry is not as efficient as it should be and there is no proper turn around time taken to process and return documents.

The Registrars tackle administrative duties as well as doing their Judges research and conducting their own hearings. Litigation is on the rise and proportionally, the Registrar’s duties have increased manifold. Registrars often have to juggle these administrative duties with their legal work and thus it is understandable, if one inadvertently drops the ball.

Hence removing these, sometimes protracted, applications from the Registrar’s diary will free up more of their time to tackle more administrative matters and their own cases which can also be highly contested especially in the areas of Insolvency Law.

One issue I did have with the directive was that the Registrars, who may one day preside over a Magistrates or Sessions Court, would not have had the benefit of getting their feet wet in appreciating more complex arguments. As there is direct supervision by way of appeal before the Judge in Chambers, the now abolished practice was, in my view, an ideal way to expose the Registrars to weighing more complex evidence and arguments and writing their grounds of judgments.

Therefore, this initiative may have sacrificed that valuable exposure for the sake of efficiency and expediency but only to a limited extent only assuming the Registrars will still assist their assigned Judge in the research of the Order 14 and Order 18 rule 19 applications.

In conclusion, the intention of the directive, if deciphered correctly above, is well intentioned but only time will tell whether it was a good move or not as the High Court Judges will have to juggle far more applications in addition to carrying out the full trials and the hearing of appeals from the Subordinate Courts scheduled in their already packed diaries. For the time being, I am cautiously optimistic!

Submitted by Navit Kaur