A notice of appeal must distinctly identify decisions in cases involving multiple parties and orders; failure leads to procedural invalidity.

[1] This is our common judgment in respect of all eight applications filed by the respondents.

[2] In the High Court at Kuala Lumpur, the appellants filed a civil suit against the respondents for the tort of conspiracy to cause injury by unlawful means. For the record, the 1st respondent is the serving Prime Minister of Malaysia whilst the 2nd respondent is his wife.

[3] The respondents who were represented by seven different sets of lawyers filed eight separate applications to strike out the suit on the common ground that the writ and amended statement of claim did not disclose any reasonable cause of action, were scandalous, frivolous and vexatious and/or an abuse of the Court process. All eight applications were filed pursuant to O 18 r 19(1) of the Rules of 2012 ("the Rules").

[4] The applications by the 1st and 2nd respondents were supported by the Affidavit of Dato Seri Mohd Najib Tun Abdul Razak, the 3rd respondent by the Affidavit of Ahmad Johari bin Abdul Razak, the 4th respondent by the Affidavit of Dato Mohd Nazim bin Tun Abdul Razak, the 5th and 6th respondents by the Affidavit of Tan Sri Cecil Wilbert Mohanaraj Abraham, the 7th respondent by the Affidavit of Zainal Abidin bin Muhayat, the 8th respondent by the Affidavit of Deepak Jaikishen a/l Jaikishan and the 9th respondent by the Affidavit of Arulampalam a/l Mariampillai.

[5] After hearing arguments on 20 November 2014, the learned judge reserved judgment to 11 December 2014, on which date she allowed the respondents applications and struck out the writ and amended statement of claim. In the penultimate paragraph of her grounds of judgment, the learned judge made the following pronouncements:

"Accordingly encls 17, 19, 25, 29, 30 and 33 are allowed with costs and encls 21 and 23 are also allowed but with no order as to costs. The writ and the amended SOC dated 23 June 2014 against all the defendants are hereby struck out."

[6] From the pronouncements, it is patently clear that she made eight similar but separate decisions, namely for encl 17 (1st and 2nd respondents), encl 19 (4th respondent), encl 21 (3rd respondent), encl 23 (5th and 6th respondents), encl 25 (7th respondent), encls 29 & 30 (9th respondent) and encl 33 (8th respondent). Two different orders were made on costs.

[7] Dissatisfied with the decisions, the appellants filed an appeal to this Court vide Notice of Appeal dated 8 January 2015. This was the sole and only notice of appeal filed by the appellants and is couched in the following terms:

"TAKE NOTICE THAT A Santamil Selvi Alau Malay, Kishen a/l Balasubramaniam, Menaga a/p Balasubramaniam and Reeshi a/l Balasubramaniam, being dissatisfied with the decision of the Honourable Justice Datuk Hasnah Bte Dato Mohamed Hashim given at the High Court Kuala Lumpur on the 11th day of December 2014, appeals to the Court of Appeal against the whole of the said decision granting the Order-in-Terms of all the defendants applications to strike out the plaintiffs claims under O 18 r 19(1) of the Rules of 2012."

[8] The appeal came up for hearing before us on 10 April 2015. Except for the 8th respondent (Deepak Jaikishan), the rest of the respondents by seven separate Notices of Motion applied to have the appeal struck out on the ground that the notice of appeal was bad in law. It was argued that since seven orders were drawn up and seven sealed orders issued by the High Court, seven notices of appeal should have been filed by the appellants instead of only one.

[9] The appellants took a different position. Their stand was that even though the hearing before the High Court involved separate applications by d