The Malaysian Bar - Re:The new trend of limiting written submissions to five pages only.

Home

Malaysian Bar Forum

home | post reply | threaded view | PDF | help

Boardwalk :: Forum List

Areas of Practice

Constitutional/Administrative Law and Human Rights

Karamjit Singh a/l Harbhajan Singh
User

Fresh Forumer

Posts: 19

The new trend of limiting written submissions to five pages only. - 2009/07/03 11:01 There appears to be a new trend amongst the High Court that written submission will only be limited to 5 pages. In fact the new ‘directions’ circulated concerning the implementation of the tracking system clearly spells this out.

Is the Court liaison committee going to do anything about this? It cannot be denied that in many cases a narration of the background fact takes up 3-4 pages. If we take a conservative stance and say it is only 1 page. It would leave us 4 pages to submit on points of contention and laws.

From my personal experience in arguing against the granting of a Mareva Injunction parties were limited to 5 pages of submissions. By no stretch of anybody imagination can one conclude that 5 pages would be sufficient to cover all points. Perhaps to be cheeky I should have used font 6 instead of the normal 12 that is ‘suggested’. It is becoming increasingly difficult to put our clients claim or defend a claim against our client with this ridiculous limit. As it is the Tracking system has imposes a stains and increases the stress factor on the life of a litigator. The limitation of submission would benefit nobody

We have a duty to put forward our client’s side of the story for the Courts determination. Now we are told ok, I will hear you but you are limited to perhaps to 1, 300 word (an average 4 page submissions).

I hope the Court liaison committee will look into this issue. I can live with this Tracking system and the giving and fulfilling directions at super fast speed but not with the limitations.

On a another note my colleagues have informed me that the some Magistrates in Kuala Lumpur Civil divisions are not resorting to invoking Order 53 of the Subordinate Courts Rule 1980 and strike the summons out for want of prosecution when a party takes 2 or more mention dates to carry out a task. Is this true?

| | The administrator has disabled public write access.

Tan Chun Ming
User

Fresh Forumer

Posts: 25

How far does justice strecth... 5 pages? - 2009/07/08 19:11 I will tell this to my frens overseas:" if you want to seek justice in Malaysia, you are limted to 5 pages. So, to achieve that, make sure your pleading never exceed 3 pages or else the facts cannot fit into the half page reserve for background, you need to leave 4 1/2 pages for us lawyers to submit."

Is our court going to limit the pages for pleadings next?

Tan Chun Ming

| | The administrator has disabled public write access.

Wee Thiam Seng
User

Junior Forumer

Posts: 199

Re:The new trend of limiting written submissions to five pages only. - 2009/07/12 22:29 Hi Karamjit,

Below is an e-mail from Ms Reggie, Chairperson of the KL Bar's Court Liaison Committee. She apologises for not being able to personally post this up, due to technical problems. Anyway I do hope her reply below will go some way to allay the concerns you raised in your earlier posting.

Regards,
Richard Wee

Dear Karamjit,

I refer to your posting in the Bar Council website on 3 July 2009.

First and foremost, allow me to clarify that the directions for 5 page written submissions apply to the Civil Division (A track) only. We were assured that these submissions are meant to be only skeletal in nature and that counsel are allowed further oral submissions on the date of hearing. We have recently received feedback from members that the courts have declined counsel the opportunity for oral submissions on the date of hearing and had relied solely on the 5 page submissions in coming to a decision. We had on 6 July 2009 met the Chief Justice, Chief Judge of Malaya as well as the Managing Judge of Civil Division and had raised this concern with them. The Managing Judge of Civil Division, Dato’ James Foong agreed to look into this issue with the Judges concerned.

With regards to some Magistrates’ courts striking out matters, the Committee will look into this and will address the same with the Subordinate Courts Hakim Kanan if such practice is indeed prevalent.

Regards,
Reggie Wong
Chair
Court Liaison Committee

| | The administrator has disabled public write access.

Karamjit Singh a/l Harbhajan Singh
User

Fresh Forumer

Posts: 19

Re:The new trend of limiting written submissions to five pages only. - 2009/07/13 16:44 Mr.Richard and Ms.Reggie,

Thanks for the reply.

From your reply I understand that, i am not the only one faced with this problem. Further, I am also made to understand that a similar 5 page submission font 14 is going to be implemented in Shah Alam. This direction is applicable for A track cases as well as M Track (Appeals) [Appeals from the Subordinate Court] it is not made clear whether the limit also applies to appeals after full trials. This direction can be found at http://selangorbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/microsoft-word-scan002.pdf.

I do hope the Committee looks into this areas as well, perhaps some of the Selangor Bar members can assist.

Thanks.

| | The administrator has disabled public write access.

Boardwalk :: Forum List Areas of Practice Constitutional/Administrative Law and Human Rights

Please abide by the Forum Rules at all times.

Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club