JUDGMENTBY: CHANG MIN TAT FJ

(delivering the judgment of the Court): In this action, the appellants sued the Government of Sabah for the loss of income from a piece of land of area 3280 acres which they quantified at $ 44 millions odd or alternatively for$ 13.2 million for the value of the land as a coconut plantation and the value of the timber thereon. With respect to the draftsman of the statement of claim, it must be said that the arithmetics of either of these two alternative heads of claim are not easy to follow from the figures given.

The language used in the statement of claim is also, with respect, so verbose and mixed that it becomes necessary to sort out the wheat from the chaff. This much, however, is clear from the statement of claim.

The donors of a power of attorney, then trading as partners in a firm known as the Chung Kwong Estates were the applicants in Lahad Datu Land Application No. 238/60 (L/A. 238/60) for a tract of virgin jungle land of some 3280 acres in extent. The development of this tract of land meant, first, the extraction of the timber thereon and then, turning it into agricultural land, more particularly into a coconut and rubber plantation. The ap

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