THE PALACE OF JUSTICE CIVIL APPEAL NO. P-02-2074-2011 ...

4 CLJ 508 (but see now the Federal Court judgment of Majlis
Perbandaran Ampang Jaya v Steven Phoa Cheng Loon & Ors
[2006] 2 CLJ 1), no other judicial authority was cited by the plaintiffs
for their proposition that the defendants as the architects of the
project owe a duty of care to the purchasers to ensure that the CFOs
of the buildings were obtained without undue delay by the developer.
With respect, we observe that the plaintiffs, in relying on the judgment
of James Foong J (as he then was) in Steven Phoa, had failed to
appreciate that that case is totally irrelevant for the purpose of the
present case, as the claims in that case involved faulty design and
negligent supervision on the part of the architects resulting in death
and injury to persons and damage to property.
At the outset it must be appreciated that in the present case the
defendants, as the architects of the project, are not the agents of the
plaintiffs, the purchasers. They are the agents of their employer – the
developer (Merger Acceptance). In Building Contracts by Donald
Keating (4 th edn.) the learned author states (at p. 200):
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