PUTRAJAYA: A woman won her final appeal in a suit for breach of trust and negligence filed against a bank five years ago after the Court of Appeal interpreted the term “trust” in Section 22 of the Limitation Act 1953 to include situations where a “constructive trust” arises.
The ruling, which is said to have departed from a 2004 Court of Appeal decision on the same point, meant that S Bathmani had successfully established her case against CIMB Bank Bhd.
In her suit, Bathmani claimed that the bank was in possession of assets belonging to her worth in excess of RM890,000.
She alleged that in the course of margin trading some 30 years ago, a share trading company associated with Southern Finance Bhd wrongfully dispossessed her of shares which she owned.
Thereafter, in November 1997, CIMB, which had taken over the assets and liabilities of Southern Finance, sued Bathmani for RM141,000 and obtained a default judgment against her.
Bathmani’s own suit against CIMB, filed in December 2017, which was the subject matter of the present appeal, sought declarations that the bank held her assets as trustee for her and were liable to account to her for them. She also sought compensation for loss and damage suffered.
In broad grounds of the decision delivered yesterday, Justice Vazeer Alam Mydin Meera said CIMB held the assets as constructive trustee for Bathmani.
He held that such a constructive trust fell within the ambit of Section 22 of the Limitation Act 1953 so that the usual provisions governing limitation of actions did not apply to prevent Bathmani, the beneficiary of the trust, from bringing her action to recover trust property from the bank.
Vazeer, who sat with P Ravinthran and Mariana Yahya, set aside rulings of the sessions court and the High Court and ordered that the matter be remitted to the sessions court for assessment of damages payable by the bank to Bathmani. - FMT
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