Court strikes out Manoharan’s application for time extension

PUTRAJAYA: Lawyer M. Manoharan has been ordered by the Court of Appeal here to stand trial over his RM3.9mil claim in legal and consultation fees for allegedly acting for two landowners.

The panel of judges unanimously striked out Manoharan’s application for an extension of time to appeal against an earlier Kuala Lumpur High Court decision to set aside a judgment-in-default (JID) awarding him the RM3.9mil.

Ordering Manoharan to pay RM15,000 in costs, the three-man panel, led by Justice Hishammudin Mohd Yunus, also fixed Sept 20 to 21 for a full trial at the Kuala Lumpur High Court.

Also on the panel were Justices Anantham Kasinather and Lim Yee Lan.

Manoharan had filed the appeal against the High Court’s decision on May 17. However, the deadline for appeal was April 9.

In applying for an extension of time, he had claimed that he had been delayed in filing due to his case load, adding that he had put his clients’ interests above his own.

However, lawyer Mansheel Kaur, who represented the landowners, argued that “lawyers should not say that they were simply too busy to file their own appeal”.

In his lawsuit filed on Dec 22 last year, Manoharan had said that he was appointed by the landowners to advise them on land deals. He subsequently obtained the default judgment from the High Court against the two landowners.

However, the landowners – medical centre Imran ENT Specialist Sdn Bhd and its director Aminah Sirajudin – succeeded in their application to set aside the judgment on March 9.