The Court of Appeal was urged today to arrive at a speedy decision to put an end to the trauma of students who were affected by the leak of the Certificate in Legal Practice (CLP) examination papers.

The sense of injustice which they have felt is a painful thing especially when they are not at all to blame for what has taken place, said Karpal Singh, counsel for the plaintiff Chan Kwai Chun.

The plaintiff is entitled to her right to be heard and expediency cannot be used to sacrifice that elementary right, he added.

Chan is appealing the High Courts dismissal of her suit against the Legal Profession Qualifying Board (LPQB) for nullifying the original July 2001 exam results as a consequence of the leak.

Chans suit binds 15 other affected candidates.

According to Karpal, the LPQB had demonstrated complete disregard for the marking procedure set out in the examiners guidelines which stipulate that all answer sheets must be examined by two separate examiners.

The answer scripts provide for a second column [for the second examiners marks] but this column was left blank (by the LPQB), said Karpal.

Moreover, according to counsel, the circumstances were such that what really mattered here was not the law.

An ounce of fact is heavier than a pound of law, and all we (plaintiffs) have brought here are facts, added Karpal.

Unqualified lawyers

Earlier, counsel for the defendant, Zaki Azmi, had submitted that the LPQB would be acting ultra vires (beyond its powers) if it declared someone who had actually failed, as having passed.

They (prospective lawyers) would not fall within the ambit of a qualified person according to Section 5 of the Legal Profession Act (LPA) which states that a student must have first passed the exam, said Zaki.

He further argued that public interest overrides the plea of legitimate expectation, and that the LPQB could not be bound by the original results as it was Khalid Yusoff (suspended director of the LPQB) who went on a frolic of his own.

Judgment has been reserved to a later date by Court of Appeal judges Abdul Hamid Mohamad, Mohamed Saari Yusoff and Wira Mohamed Noor Ahmad who presided over the hearing.

The CLP scandal erupted last November when the July 2001 exam questions were found to have been leaked, and marks had allegedly been tampered with by Khalid.

Subsequently, the LPQB issued a new set of results which confirmed that only 119 out of the original 232 candidates have obtained a clear pass, while the others who had initially passed didnt.