Edgar Joseph Jr FCJ:

We sat for two days hearing these two applications made pursuant to the provisions of s. 96(a) of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964 (Act 91), for leave to appeal from the orders of the Court of Appeal dismissing the Applicants' appeals from orders of Mr. Justice Ian Chin refusing to strike out the Respondents' actions in Suit No. 351 of 1997 and Suit No. 352 of 1997 for want of prosecution, and, at the conclusion of the arguments, we reserved our decision until the next day when we dismissed the same, with an intimation that we would be delivering a judgment in writing on a date to be announced. This we now do. The Applicants are the Defendants and the Respondents are the Plaintiffs.

It is not the practice of this Court, nor as we understand it, the practice of the House of Lords, when sitting in its judicial capacity hearing applications for leave to appeal, to give explicit reasons for granting or refusing leave, save in circumstances where their Lordships considered that they had no jurisdiction to entertain the application.

We would interpolate to remark that, unlike in this country, the sieve for English civil appeals to the House of Lords operates at two levels, that is to say, in the Court of Appeal and in the House of Lords.

Having said that, we hasten to add, in the words of Lord Diplock speaking in the House of Lord in Modern Engineering v. Gilbert - Ash [1974] AC at p. 715, 716: "Refusal of leave to appeal does not imply approval by this House of a judgment sought to be appealed against. That judgment carries the same authority as any other unappealed judgment of the Court of Appeal - neither more nor less." With this statement of principle we respectfully agree. The natural tendency, therefore, to claim that a judgment of the Court of Appeal which has been the subject of an unsuccessful application for leave to appeal carries greater authority than one which has gone unchallenged, must be resisted.

The only reason why we thought it desirable that we should give a judgment in writing in this case is because it affords us the opportunity to offer guidance, without in any way attempting to establish a rigid framework into which all new situations must be forced, when considering applications for leave to appeal from the judgments of the Court of Appeal to this Court in civil matters which, so far as relevant to the present case, are now controlled by the new s. 96(a) of the Courts of Judicature Act, 1964 which provides:

96. Subject to any rules regulating the proceedings of the Federal Court in respect of appeals from the Court of Appeal, an appeal shall lie from the Court of Appeal to the Federal Court with the leave of the Federal Court -

(a) from any judgment or order of the Court of Appeal in respect of any civil cause or matter decided by the High Court in the exercise of its original jurisdiction involving a question of general principle decided for the first time or a question of importance upon which further argument

and a decision of the Federal Court would be to public advantage.

First of all, we should like to make the preliminary observation that the Federal Court as an apex court, is a court apart, in the sense, that over and above its role as a tribunal of review, it performs the vital function of supervising the process of judicial law-making which is such an integral part of our common law system modified by statute. It is therefore salutary to remind ourselves of what Lord Roskill said, with reference to the right of appeal to the House of Lords, (which we venture to suggest should apply with equal force, in principle, to this Court) in In re Wilson [1985] 2 WLR 694 at 698 C to D:

Your Lordships' House is only able, in any given year, to hear and determine a limited number of cases and it is important for the evolution of the law as a whole that those cases should be carefully chosen.

Similarly, here is what Mr. Justice Frankfurter said, with reference to the rig