Court won’t overrule tribunal

07/02/2006 The Star By RAPHAEL WONG

PUTRAJAYA: Awards by the Consumer Claims Tribunal should not be overturned unless there is a clear-cut error, the Court of Appeal has held.

The court should be slow in interfering with decisions of the tribunal as it was created by Parliament with the intention to protect consumers, said Court of Appeal Justice Gopal Sri Ram.

“If we start injecting common law, contract law and the various other laws, it would be like us taking a parang and chopping what Parliament intended,” he said, adding that the tribunal applied consumer law, which was based on equity and justice.

“Unless there is a clear-cut error, we will leave the award alone.”

He said this when he and Court of Appeal Justices Hashim Mohd Yusoff and Mohd Noor Abdullah unanimously restored the Consumer Claims Tribunal award given to a freelance language teacher, who was dissatisfied with the quality of teaching and instruction provided to her children by a Kumon Method of Learning Centre in Selangor.

Justice Sri Ram said it was high time consumers were protected from producers of goods and services.

“You can get blood from stone or even life back from God but you will get no money back from the trader. This kind of bad trading practice must cease, he said.

“Parliament got fed up, and that is why it created a special tribunal.”

The three-men bench unanimously set aside a High Court order to quash the Tribunal’s decision to award 41-year-old Hazlinda Hamzah RM4,070 on her claim of being “short-changed” by the Kumon centre.

“We are satisfied the learned judge was wrong in this case and, for the reasons which will be given in due course, this appeal is allowed,” Justice Sri Ram said.

On the submission by Kumon counsel Y.T. Ling that the written decision by former tribunal chairman Eddie Yeoh – given after the High Court wrote several letters to him – was an afterthought, Justice Sri Ram said: “That is a very serious allegation against a very senior and respectable public officer. Eddie Yeoh has served the Government with distinction.”

When Ling submitted that there were no findings by the tribunal, Justice Sri Ram interjected: “The tribunal found that Kumon gave bad service. The fact that this lady (Hazlinda) filed a complaint at the Tribunal shows that she’s a civic-conscious and responsible citizen.”

On Feb 21, 2001, Hazlinda, 41, enrolled her three children in the Kumon centre in USJ4, but 23 months later, she withdrew her children and enrolled them in another centre.

She found many discrepancies between the quality of teaching and instruction of the first centre and that of the second.

On March 26, 2003, Hazlinda filed a complaint against Kumon with the tribunal and her grouses included the quality of service of the first centre she had enrolled her children in.

She asked for the return of course fees totalling RM7,740 that she paid for her three children, as well as costs.

About a month later, the Tribunal allowed Hazlinda’s claim and ordered Kumon to pay her 50% of the fees and RM200 costs, for a total of RM4,070.

However, on May 24, 2004, the High Court allowed Kumon’s application for a judicial review and quashed the tribunal’s decision.