KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 14): Gombak Member of Parliament (MP) Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali will be applying to strike out the lawsuit filed against him by 10 constituents who accuse him of breaching his fiduciary obligations and constitutional oath, the High Court was told today.

Azmin’s lawyer Nizamuddin Hamid informed the court during case management that the lawmaker would apply to strike out the suit as he believes that there is no reasonable cause of action.

“The action is frivolous and it is an abuse of the court process,” Nizamuddin said after case management before deputy registrar Maslinda Selamat via Zoom.

The court set Feb 16 for further case management.

Nizamuddin also told the court that the lawyers representing the 10 Gombak constituents misled the press on Azmin’s failure to attend the court and reply to the summons against him during the last case management in December.

“We have highlighted to the court the misrepresentation of the plaintiffs’ solicitors to the press concerning the purported service of the cause papers on our client and his failure to attend the court during the last case management,” said Nizamuddin.

According to the lawyer, neither the writ nor the statement of claim was personally served on Azmin or any person duly authorised by the MP to accept service on his behalf.

Previously, Nizamuddin claimed that the suit was served at Azmin’s service centre, which he deemed to be bad service and was in blatant contravention of the rules of court.

Nizamuddin claimed today that the court had taken notice of this.

Nizamuddin was referring to an earlier statement made by lawyer Yohendra Nadarajan, representing the 10 plantiffs, that a suit had been filed against Azmin.

In the suit, the plantiffs claimed that Azmin, who was elected the Gombak MP in the 14th general election (GE14), had deceived the voters by allying himself with Barisan Nasional (BN) in the new Perikatan Nasional (PN) government after having courted them on the premise of ousting BN from the government.

"A writ of summons must be served via the procedures set out in the rules of court. This is a common practice, and we are shocked that he (Yohendra) saw fit to announce that the suit was served upon Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali on Dec 1.

"Furthermore, there has not been any efforts to personally serve the suit upon Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali, who is the minister of MITI,  at his home or his office at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry," Azmin's lawyer said.

Nizamuddin added that Yohendra did not write to his client seeking an appointment to effect service.