However, Judge Akhtar Tahir had, in the same judgment on April 21, allowed the family the liberty to file another suit within a stipulated time if they so wished.
Lawyer SN Nair, who is appearing, for the family, said a notice of appeal was filed in the Court of Appeal yesterday.
“We have served a copy of the notice of appeal to the Attorney-General’s Chambers,” he said.
Akhtar, in annulling the suit on a technicality, said the family’s statement of claim did not comply with Order 18, Rule 7 of the Rules of Court on pleadings.
He also ordered the family to pay RM3,000 in costs to the government.
Nair told FMT that he would now wait for Akhtar to provide the grounds of judgment before filing the memorandum of appeal.
Smit’s mother Christina Carolina Gerarda Johanna Verstappen filed the lawsuit last year and named the government, police and investigating officer Faizal Abdullah as defendants. She claimed they had failed to determine the cause of her daughter’s death.
The then 18-year-old model was found dead on the sixth floor of CapSquare Residence here on Dec 7, 2017, after falling from the 20th floor of a condominium unit owned by American couple Alex Johnson and Luna Almazkyzy.
Verstappen said that on or about the evening of Dec 7, 2017, she was informed of the death of her daughter and flew to Kuala Lumpur from the Netherlands.
Upon arrival, Verstappen said, she was asked by the defendants to identify the deceased at the morgue of Hospital Kuala Lumpur.
She said she was also informed by the defendants and one sergeant Haliza (the first investigating officer) that her daughter’s nude body had been found on the balcony of the sixth floor condo and that her daughter had committed suicide.
She added that the defendants had opened a sudden death report (SDR) on the same date and had proceeded to conclude the case as death caused by natural causes or suicide.
Verstappen said she could not accept this conclusion as she found it “highly unbelievable, incredible and incredulous and was also aghast and appalled that the defendants had only opened a SDR”.
She contended that the action or omission by the defendants was in clear breach of SOPs and best practices in police investigations.
An inquest was held in 2018 to determine Smit’s cause of death, and the coroner’s court returned a misadventure verdict.
However, upon revision, High Court Judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah ruled that Smit’s death was caused by “persons known or unknown”.