Be Careful of the Categorization of Part A documents at Trial

There is often a misunderstanding as to the administrative process of categorizing trial documents into Parts A, B and C. The confusion stems from the true effect of what is considered as undisputed documents in Part A, being usually referred to as “Agreed as to Existence and Admitted as to Contents”.

This issue has been recently clarified by the Court of Appeal in Thiagarajan S Rengasamy and Ors v Sri Ganes Palaniapan. In this case, the High Court dismissed the defamation claim solely because the allegedly defamatory articles were placed in Part A.

The Court of Appeal found that once a document is placed in Part A, it must follow that the parties have agreed that the meaning of the words contained in the document is representative of the truth. Since the statements are deemed to be true, the defamation claim must necessarily fail irrespective of whether the statements may reduce the reputation of the Plaintiff.

This is a cautionary tale for all legal practitioners to be careful of which documents they seek to include in Part A. Whilst every effort should be made to reach a consensus on categorization of documents (to avoid placing unnecessary documents in Part C - being Non Agreed/ Admitted), the converse is also true - one must consider the implications of Part A documents before agreeing to the same.

See grounds of judgment here:

https://tinyurl.com/mv76y7wu