Viscount Radcliffe J:

The judgment of their Lordships was delivered by,

Viscount Radcliffe: The issue raised by this appeal involves a preliminary point of law taken by the appellant in an action pending between him and the respondent company in the High Court of the Federation of Malaya. In that action the appellant is suing the respondent for monies alleged to be due to him and certain other relief, and he has objected to a defence or set of defences put in by the respondent, on the ground that the latter is estopped from raising them by virtue of a previous judgment given in an earlier action between the same parties. It is the validity of this objection that was argued and decided as a preliminary point. In the High Court Ong J upheld it: his judgment was reversed in the Court of Appeal who decided that there was no estoppel.

The issue is one of law. The relevant facts embrace nothing more than the circumstances of the earlier action, in which was given the judgment that is said to have created the estoppel, and the pleadings in the present action which is now pending.

The former action was instituted as a civil suit in the High Court of the Federation on 30 June