T Selventhiranathan J:

On 2 August 2001, when encls. (11) and (13) (the notices in Form 63 of Appendix A to the Rules of the High Court 1980 ("the Rules") to attend the pre-trial conference of this case filed by the plaintiff and the defendant pertaining to the claim and counterclaim respectively) came on for continued hearing, I made the following order after hearing the learned counsel appearing for the parties:

Court: This is a proper case for the court to exercise its powers under Order 34, rule 7 of the Rules of the High Court 1980 owing to clear documentary proof in the form of letters (and admission by counsel for the defendant of failure to respond thereto) of the uncooperative attitude of the defendant which resulted in its failure to comply with the court's directions of the 1st March 2001, which directions were repeated by the senior assistant registrar on the 6th June 2001.

I therefore accordingly order that the defence and counterclaim be dismissed and that judgment be entered for the plaintiff as per its claim with costs as I am of the view that such an order against the defendant, which has been the defaulting party here, will meet the ends of justice.

The above is my order and I reserve the right to supply my grounds of judgment in the event of an appeal.

Further thereto, I set out hereunder the reasons for making that order as the defendant has appealed to the Court of Appeal against my decision. In this judgment, any reference to an order, rule or form by itself shall mean that order of, or that rule in an order of, or that form in the relevant appendix to, the rules respectively.

For the purpose of completeness, I also directed that the note of the proceedings in relation to encls. (11) and (13) before the senior assistant registrar ("the registrar") on 6 June 2001 during the court vacation be included in the notes of proceedings provided for the purposes of the appeal.

On 1 March 2001, when the parties appeared before me for a pre-trial conference in respect of encls. (11) and (13) and after conferring with them, I directed that they file the following documents by 22 May 2001:

(a) the bundle of pleadings;

(b) a common bundle or bundles of documents to be divided into those agreed upon and those disputed, as to maker or contents or both, as the case may be;

(c) facts upon which the parties were agreed;

(d) the issues;

(e) the facts to be proved by each party in relation to the issues.

The two enclosures were then set down for continued hearing and further directions on 6 June 2001.

However, that date fell within the court vacation (the dates of which were only made known subsequent to 1 March 2001) and, in accordance with practice, encls. (11) and (13) were mentioned before the registrar on that date. Upon the parties' application, he gave an extension of time until 22 June 2001 for the parties to comply with my directions of 1 March 2001, and set down the enclosures for continued hearing on 2 August 2001.

On the latter date, the counsel for the plaintiff at first sought a further extension of two months for the parties to comply with the court's directions.

However, when the court questioned him as to the reasons for non-compliance with its directions, he produced correspondence which clearly showed, apart from a letter dated 5 June 2001 wherein the defendant's solicitors thanked the plaintiff's solicitors for agreeing to mention the case on their behalf on 6 June 2001, that the defendant's solicitors took a could-not-care-less attitude to repeated requests contained in a series of letters beginning from 12 April to 11 July 2001 from the plaintiff's solicitors seeking their agreement and cooperation in preparing the bundle of documents, statement of agreed facts and issues for the trial of this action.

In this regard, I reproduce hereunder all the material correspondence (without corrections as to grammar, spelling and punctuation) between the solicitors for the parties in chronological sequence f