Answering Jeffrey

By N H Chan

In the recent article by Martin Jalleh dated 14 Sept 2011 entitled Chief Jester’s Circus and Charade Comes to a Close (Part 2) which appeared in your blog, I find this comment from Jeffrey:

The Ex judges that talked independent, don’t forget that they do so only after they left office, with nothing to lose!

Normally I do not answer comments from commentators. But in this case I think Mr Jeffrey should know that he is mistaken because apparently he does not know about me when I was a serving judge. For sure he has not read my book How to Judge the Judges. I would suggest that he reads Ayer Molek v Insas [1995] 2 MLJ 735. This is what I said in the Court of Appeal, page 742 (in my book at page 164):

The ex parte order in the instant case which compels compliance of it within two working days and the subsequent conduct of the judge in adjourning the application of the defendants to set aside the ex parte order to a date after the period allowed for compliance of the order (without granting a stay of the ex parte order) have effectively deprived the defendants from exercising their right to apply to set aside an ex parte injunction. This misuse of the court’s procedure, in our view, is manifestly unfair to a party to litigation before it. This court, therefore, has a duty to exercise its inherent power to prevent misuse of its procedure.

With me in the Court of Appeal were Siti Norma Yaacob JCA (later Federal Court judge and Chief Judge of the High Court (Malaya) and KC Vohrah J (later judge of the Court of Appeal), both are judges of the highest integrity. I concluded the Court of Appeal’s judgment thus, page 744:

These observations are made so that people will not say, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” – Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.

Our decision in the Court of Appeal went to the Federal Court within a week and we were severely criticized by Chief Justice Eusoff Chin who ordered our judgment to be expunged. But in expunging the objectionable passages from the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Eusoff Chin had to repeat the expunged passages in his judgment; see Insas v Ayer Molek [1995] 2 MLJ 833. What is the use of expunging our judgment when anyone can read the expunged part from the judgment of the Federal Court? When we have imbeciles as judges this is what you get!