Effective date of commencement: 3.2.2009
Courts involved: Civil and Commercial Divisions of the Kuala Lumpur High Courts
Courts excluded: Family; Appellate & Miscellaneous Matters; Bankruptcy; and Intellectual Property matters
Rationale: Judges are to be freed from administrative matters such as dealing with adjournments, settlements and other miscellaneous matters so as to concentrate solely on hearing matters assigned to them after the matter has been “case managed” by a central Management Court for the respective divisions. The judges are to sit at 9am till 12.30pm and 2pm (or 2.30pm) till 4.30pm to solely to hear contested applications or the trial of the suit. This will enable speedier disposal of hearings and trials by the judges.
Procedure: To implement this, Judges are designated as either trial judges or application judges to hear trial or applications respectively (“T-track” or “A-track” judges) with no merging or crossing-over.
As such, for instance, if a pending interlocutory application was heard or fixed before a particular court whose judge is now a “T-track” judge, the application will be re-assigned by the Management Court to an “A-track” judge and vice versa.
The court numbering system is rendered obsolete as no court numbers will be assigned to the cause papers filed in Court and only Codes will be given. So an application will be heard at the “Managing Court” (if the matter is to be before a judge) or the Senior Assistant Registrar, as the case may be, based on the Code given to the same. Any court numbers are merely for identification purposes.
All new application or new suit will be managed by Deputy Registrars to get it ready for hearing/trials at the Managing Court located at level 5 for Commercial matters and level 4 for Civil matters. Counsel attending case management must be fully conversant with the facts and chronology of the case. Once the application/suit has been managed to the point that it is ready for hearing, the Registrar will fix it for hearing before the first or next available T-track or A-track judge as the case may be. Once a matter is fixed for hearing, it will be hard put for lawyers to adjourn the same on grounds such as having other hearings and so on.
Judges will have no diaries at their respective courts since all adjournments, fixing of dates and so on are done by the Management Court (either Civil or Commercial). The judges are to concentrate on hearing the contested applications or the trial of the suit, the entire day.
Due to there being no specific court number assigned to a suit, different interlocutory applications within the same suit may be heard by different A-track judges depending on availability.
Deputy Registrars no longer hear any applications and all applications if it is not within the jurisdiction of judges, will be heard by Senior Assistant Registrars who are all located on the 3rd Floor, both for Commercial and Civil matters.
Courts involved: Civil and Commercial Divisions of the Kuala Lumpur High Courts
Courts excluded: Family; Appellate & Miscellaneous Matters; Bankruptcy; and Intellectual Property matters
Rationale: Judges are to be freed from administrative matters such as dealing with adjournments, settlements and other miscellaneous matters so as to concentrate solely on hearing matters assigned to them after the matter has been “case managed” by a central Management Court for the respective divisions. The judges are to sit at 9am till 12.30pm and 2pm (or 2.30pm) till 4.30pm to solely to hear contested applications or the trial of the suit. This will enable speedier disposal of hearings and trials by the judges.
Procedure: To implement this, Judges are designated as either trial judges or application judges to hear trial or applications respectively (“T-track” or “A-track” judges) with no merging or crossing-over.
As such, for instance, if a pending interlocutory application was heard or fixed before a particular court whose judge is now a “T-track” judge, the application will be re-assigned by the Management Court to an “A-track” judge and vice versa.
The court numbering system is rendered obsolete as no court numbers will be assigned to the cause papers filed in Court and only Codes will be given. So an application will be heard at the “Managing Court” (if the matter is to be before a judge) or the Senior Assistant Registrar, as the case may be, based on the Code given to the same. Any court numbers are merely for identification purposes.
All new application or new suit will be managed by Deputy Registrars to get it ready for hearing/trials at the Managing Court located at level 5 for Commercial matters and level 4 for Civil matters. Counsel attending case management must be fully conversant with the facts and chronology of the case. Once the application/suit has been managed to the point that it is ready for hearing, the Registrar will fix it for hearing before the first or next available T-track or A-track judge as the case may be. Once a matter is fixed for hearing, it will be hard put for lawyers to adjourn the same on grounds such as having other hearings and so on.
Judges will have no diaries at their respective courts since all adjournments, fixing of dates and so on are done by the Management Court (either Civil or Commercial). The judges are to concentrate on hearing the contested applications or the trial of the suit, the entire day.
Due to there being no specific court number assigned to a suit, different interlocutory applications within the same suit may be heard by different A-track judges depending on availability.
Deputy Registrars no longer hear any applications and all applications if it is not within the jurisdiction of judges, will be heard by Senior Assistant Registrars who are all located on the 3rd Floor, both for Commercial and Civil matters.
By Dahlia Lee
Chairperson
KL Bar Court Liaison Committee