PUTRAJAYA – Three negligence suits filed by the parents of three patients who perished in the fire at Sultanah Aminah Johor Bahru Hospital in 2016 will go to trial at the high court.
This came after senior federal counsel Zahilah Mohammad Yusoff, who represented the hospital director, health director-general, Health Ministry, Malaysian government, and Johor health director, agreed to withdraw their leave to appeal applications.
They wanted to appeal a decision by the Court of Appeal in February last year that overturned a high court ruling that had dismissed the suits.
Chief Judge of Malaya Tan Sri Mohamad Zabidin Mohd Diah, who chaired the Federal Court’s three-member bench, then struck out the leave applications.
The two other judges on the bench were Federal Court judges Tan Sri Nallini Pathmanathan and Datuk Abu Bakar Jais.
In today’s online proceeding, justice Mohamad Zabidin told Zahilah that the Court of Appeal decision, which the government is seeking leave to appeal, is interlocutory and involves statute of limitations issues.
He (justice Mohamad Zabidin) said the court does not grant leave for interlocutory matters and asked Zahilah if it was better for the trial to proceed at the high court where the government could argue on the issues relating to the Government’s Proceedings Act and the statute of limitation since the trial has not started.
Justice Abu Bakar said it is better for those issues to be trashed out at the high court instead of the government proceeding with the leave to appeal applications, as the high court’s decision can be appealed.
Lawyer S. Gunasegaran, representing the victims’ parents, said the government would not be prejudiced and would not be stopped from arguing the point on the statute of limitations in the high court.
Zahilah then agreed to withdraw the leave application to appeal.
The parents of the three patients – Logeswaran Krishnasamy, Choo Lin Fong, and Kaliama Muniandy – filed the suits in 2019, claiming negligence on the part of the hospital and the government over the fire that broke out on October 25, 2016, in the south intensive care unit ward of the hospital. Six patients perished in the fire.
On May 3 this year, the Court of Appeal allowed the appeals brought by the parents of the three patients to overturn a high court ruling in February last year that struck out their suits.
The high court struck out the suits on the grounds that they were “time-barred”’. Section 2(a) of the Public Authorities Protection Act 1948 imposes a three-year statute of limitations on suits or prosecutions against individuals executing public duties. – September 21, 2023