Gopal Sri Ram JCA:

[1] The defendant (appellant before us) is a banker. The plaintiffs (respondents before us) are its customers. At the material time there was in the plaintiffs' employ a man by the name of Kang. He too was a customer of the defendant. He owed the plaintiffs a considerable sum of money: RM211,489.29 in all. He gave the plaintiffs 5 cheques in settlement of the debt. They were all drawn on the defendant's branch at Kepong, Kuala Lumpur. That is the same branch at which the plaintiffs had their account. The plaintiffs presented the first cheque. There was insufficient money in Kang's account to meet his cheque. In the ordinary course of business, a bank will return such a cheque to the presenter - be it a bank or its own customer - indicating that it had been dishonoured. But that is not what happened here. The manager of the defendant's Kepong branch returned the cheque to Kang. The plaintiffs were not told that the cheque had been dishonoured because of lack of funds. So, they assumed that the first cheque was good for payment. They then presented each of the other cheques and on each occasion the same thing happened. Each cheque was handed to Kang by the d