PETALING JAYA: Former attorney-general (AG) Tommy Thomas has filed an application to strike out a suit filed by nine plaintiffs, including two Sabah deputy chief ministers, claiming that he allegedly mishandled a claim by descendants of the Sulu sultanate over the north Borneo territory.
The striking out application was taken out on all four grounds listed in Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012.
“The suit discloses no reasonable cause of action; is scandalous, frivolous and vexatious; will prejudice, embarrass and/or delay the fair trial of the action; and is an abuse of process,” Thomas’ solicitors in Kota Kinabalu, Setzu & Co, said in an email to FMT.
The former AG engaged the Sabah law firm to represent him as lawyers from the peninsula require ad-hoc admission from the High Court of Sabah and Sarawak to appear in cases there.
The solicitors also said the High Court in Kota Kinabalu had on Jan 3 granted the federal government, which has intervened in the suit, a stay of proceedings pending the outcome of a decision on a related proceeding in a Spanish court.
Last week, a Spanish constitutional court rejected an appeal by a group claiming to be heirs of the last sultan of Sulu in their ongoing dispute with Putrajaya over compensation for the cession of Sabah.
The heirs were seeking to challenge a lower court order which annulled the appointment of arbitrator Gonzalo Stampa to preside over the dispute.
According to Setzu & Co, the Kota Kinabalu High Court has yet to fix a hearing date, but has scheduled an e-review proceeding before judicial commissioner Amelati Anak Parnell on March 29.
The plaintiffs, who filed the suit last August, want a declaration that Thomas, who as AG was the government’s legal adviser between June 2018 and February 2020, committed misfeasance in public office.
The suit was brought by Jeffrey Kitingan and Joachim Gunsalam, Sabah ministers Jahid Jahim and Ellron Angin, as well as state assistant ministers Joniston Bangkuai, Abidin Madingkir, Robert Tawfik, Julita Mojungki and Flovia Ng.
In February last year, Stampa ruled that the federal government must pay US$14.92 billion (RM62.59 billion) to the descendants of the last sultan of Sulu.
The dispute has its origin in an 1878 Deed of Cession between the then sultan of Sulu, Sultan Jamal Al Alam, and Baron de Overbeck, the then maharaja of Sabah, and British North Borneo Company’s Alfred Dent.
Pursuant to the agreement, Jamal ceded sovereignty over large parts of Sabah to Dent and Overbeck, who agreed that they and their future heirs would pay the heirs of the sultan 5,000 Mexican dollars annually.
In 1936, the last formally-recognised sultan of Sulu, Jamalul Kiram II, died without heirs, and payments temporarily ceased until North Borneo High Court chief justice Charles F Macaskie named nine court-appointed heirs in 1939.
Although Malaysia took over these payments when it became the successor of the agreement following Sabah’s independence and the formation of the federation in 1963, the payments – equivalent to RM5,300 a year – ceased in 2013 after an incursion by armed men into Lahad Datu, along the eastern coast of Sabah. - FMT
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