Fadley Faisal
A man filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of Brunei Darussalam against a company after falling off a ship undergoing repairs in a dry dock in a shipyard in Labuan.
The court dismissed it in default of defence.
The plaintiff then appealed in the High Court against the order.
Sitting in the High Court Civil Suit appeal, Judicial Commissioner Edward Timothy Starbuck Woolley last month dismissed Dr Nabil Agroubi’s appeal against the dismissal of his claims for personal injury in the action against the ship owner Interhill Industries Sdn Bhd.
Justice Woolley also ordered costs of the action to be borne by the plaintiff.
In Justice Woolley’s judgement, the plaintiff represented by Counsel Lt Colonel (Rtd) Harif Ibrahim started pursuing the claims in January 2020 after falling off the ship in
February 2017.
Among others, the plaintiff filed for a default judgement to be entered on a basis of no defence being filed by the defendant.
Later, the defendant represented by Counsel Eric Siow contended that there were irregularities in procedural steps taken to obtain the judgement in default of defence and applied to set aside the judgement, which was dismissed by the Senior Registrar earlier.
Justice Woolley held that a party alleging irregularity in any causepapers as the duty to make an application within a reasonable time to strike out the irregularity and that as the plaintiff had not made any application to strike out the irregularities in the defendant’s causepapers, had been too late by then.
Justice Woolley also found that there was no delay to cause serious prejudice to the plaintiff’s case.
Justice Woolley concluded that as the judgement in default was irregular, and that the defendant had pleaded a defence with real prospect of success, the judgement should be set aside and dismissed the plaintiff’s appeal.
