I refer to the Malaysiakini report Bar Council attempts to put brakes on hurried 'justice' .

The Malaysian public laments that to have justice in the Malaysian courts, it will take years. It is not at all uncommon to hear from senior lawyers that they have cases that have been pending for more than 10 years waiting to be finally disposed off. Now whose fault is this?

I would say it is both the fault of the lawyers and the judges. This problem has been festering for so many years that it has already become a judicial culture that on the first hearing date, cases will not go on. We are so used to hearing that ‘justice delayed is justice denied’.

And now, when the chief justice decides to get the judges to pull up their socks and introduces a fast track system to clear the backlog of cases, the Bar Council is crying foul. They are saying that justice is being dispensed in unholy haste?

Let me just cursorily go through the system that is being introduced in the lower courts and this also applies in the High Court. When a party files an action, we would like to assume that he would have almost all of his witnesses ready and all his evidence and bundles of documents ready. He then serves it on the defendant and the defence files an appearance if he engages a lawyer.

When the defence is in the preliminary stage, called a ‘mention’ stage, the judges will give directions on the filing of documents and bundles. Once these are all done by the parties concerned, a hearing date is fixed and the parties must be ready for trial.

Now from the judicial perspective previously, the court will fix up to 10 cases a day for hearing and many more cases for mention. Of the 10 cases, perhaps half or more of the cases will be settled leaving the balance ready for hearing. At this point, the judges will fix cases that are filed earliest or part-heard cases to be disposed off while the rest are postponed to another date.

Previously, postponements were readily given by the judges, some with good excuses, some with no excuses at all. This led some lawyers to say that the judges are lazy. It is here that the system is being abused by the lawyers themselves. In the present system, not many cases are fixed for hearing, but those fixed for hearing are to be heard and lawyers are expected to proceed with the cases.

Now we hear of lawyers handling two or sometimes more ‘hearing cases’ a day. Look, no lawyer can be at two places at one time but when both the cases are slotted for hearing and ready to proceed, that is when the lawyers scream blue murder. Logically, if you think about it, how can a lawyer handle more than two cases a day?

So to solve this, they fix one for in the morning and another for in the afternoon and invariably both the cases are only part-heard and this compounds the backlog of cases and delay.

In the event the Bar Council can come up with a perfect system in Malaysia to clear the backlong, please tell the judiciary. For so many years, we have been living with delay after delay to the extent that we find it hard to face the clients only to blame it on the courts.

Here, we have the Chief Justice of Malaya who has studied the problems. The CJ acknowledges that his judges, magistrates and court staff are also the cause of the delays. Those of you who know, how many of you have experienced of ‘cases not listed’ and ‘files gone missing’?

Now things are happening and I dare say that the courts are now very efficient although there is still room for improvement. Understandably, the senior lawyers are the most affected and I don’t blame them. Quite a few have still not come into the IT era and still rely on their Olivetti or IBM typewriter.

On this, I say the CJ is going in the right direction and for once I see the judiciary moving to clear the backlog of court cases. This, of course, does not mean that the judiciary is free from other criticisms.

The Bar Council has to be honest in that their members are not angels and that they also have contributed to the backlog of cases.