The Court of Appeal today rejected an appeal by a Certificate in Legal Practice (CLP) candidate to reverse the High Courts dismissal of her suit for a declaration to reinstate the original results of the July 2001 examination.

Judges Abdul Hamid Mohamed, Saari Mohd Yusof and Mohd Noor Ahmad unanimously rejected the appeal by Chan Kwai Chun. Chan was among the 921 candidates affected by the Legal Profession Qualifying Boards decision to nullify the July examination results due to leaks in the question papers and tampering of marks.

In his oral decision, Hamid said that in actual fact Chan was asking the court to use its discretionary power to declare candidates who had failed the examination as being passed.

This, he added, would be a wrong declaration.

We do not think that it is in the interest of the legal profession or the public that the court exercises its discretionary power to make such a declaration, said Hamid who also informed the lawyers that his written judgment will be provided on a later date.

Chans lawyer Karpal Singh told reporters that he will be applying for leave to take the matter further to the Federal Court.

On April 10, the judges had reserved their judgment after hearing arguments from Karpal and lawyer Zaki Azmi who acted for the board.

Zaki had argued that the board would be acting in breach of the Legal Profession Act if it allowed a candidate who failed her exam to be a qualified person.

Based on facts

He said the decision to revoke the July examination results was based on the facts represented to the board by its then examination director Khalid Yusoff.

He added that the initial examination result by the board was made based on a misrepresentation by Khalid who went on a frolic of its own by increasing marks of certain candidates when in fact his job was to transpose the marks in the exam scripts into the master list report.

Karpal had argued that candidates should not be blamed for the tampering of the July 2001 CLP examination results allegedly committed Khalid.