Lawyer Sarah Abishegam informed a three-member Court of Appeal bench chaired by justice Azizah Nawawi that Shafee Abdullah, who is lead counsel for the five appellants, was unwell.

The bank’s lawyer, Yoong Sin Min, informed the court that this was the seventh time the appeal had been adjourned.

Azizah said the court was minded to award costs.

“In view of a medical certificate tendered by Shafee, the case is adjourned to another date.

“This shall be the final adjournment for this appeal,” Azizah, who sat with justices Lee Heng Cheong and Hashim Hamzah, said.

She also fixed the matter for case management to enable parties to fix a new hearing date for the appeal.

Earlier, Sarah said Shafee was the only counsel authorised to represent the appellants, but he had come down with a fever and sore throat, and had lost his voice.

“We have (produced) a medical certificate obtained from ENT specialist Dr Awal Hassan from KPJ Damansara,” she said.

She also said most of the past adjournments were due to Covid-19 and the movement control order.

“We have no choice because he (Shafee) is the only one authorised to conduct this matter. We seek a short adjournment,” she said.

Yoong said she was having difficulty explaining the adjournments to her client. She said the appeal was filed in August 2019.

“We have gone through six case management and six hearing dates which have been adjourned. Each time the hearing date was fixed, we had to make preparation (to argue the appeal).

“We were only told this morning of Shafee’s inability to attend.

“There has to be some fairness to us as well. I would say the adjournments were attributed to the appellants,” she said.

Azizah said they have a medical certificate but the court was minded to award costs for today’s postponement as Yoong had come prepared.

Sarah suggested a nominal sum of RM1,000 while Yoong proposed RM10,000.

On July 29, 2019, the High Court in Kuala Lumpur dismissed the suit by NFC, its three subsidiary companies and chairman Salleh Ismail.

Salleh, the husband of former minister Shahrizat Abdul Jalil, had accused the bank of breaching a confidentiality clause.

Then High Court justice Su Geok Yiam said NFC and its subsidiary companies had failed to prove their case against the bank on a balance of probabilities.

Salleh, NFC and the subsidiary companies sued Public Bank in 2012, after details of transactions were revealed by then Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli.

They had sought RM560 million from the bank.

The plaintiffs also failed to prove that former bank employee Johari Mohamad had leaked the information to Rafizi.