SUM YEE MING v. THE MANUFACTURERS LIFE INSURANCE CO AND ANOTHER

HCAL 502/2022

[2022] HKCFI 2593

IN THE HIGH COURT OF THE

HONG KONG SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE REGION

COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE

CONSTITUTIONAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE LAW LIST NO 502 OF 2022

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D E C I S I O N

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A.  Introduction

1.  By a Form 86 filed on 20 June 2022, the applicant seeks leave to apply for judicial review in connection with a life insurance policy (“Policy”)  she purchased from the 1^st putative respondent (“ManuLife”)  in 1992.

2.  No specific decision is identified in the Form 86 as the intended subject of the challenge.  Instead the applicant has stated certain matters and asked various questions, in effect to summarize her complaints in the area where the decision sought to be impugned should be identified.

3.  The application is utterly without merit.

B.  The Complaints

4.  The applicant’s original complaint was that she was prey to a misrepresentation as to the content of the Policy when she purchased it in 1992.  She then commenced three legal actions (excluding the present one)  in the decades followed:

(1)  In 2009, she sued ManuLife in the District Court in DCCJ 4133/2009.  She lost all the way up to Court of Final Appeal (“CFA”)  in FAMV 17/2012 in 2013.

(2)  In 2019, she instituted her second legal action.  This time, the action was taken out in the High Court, in HCA 837/2019.  Besides ManuLife, she also named the Hong Kong Government as a defendant because she was dissatisfied about how her first action had been handled by the judges involved.  Her action was struck out.  Her application for extension of time to appeal was then rejected in CACV 101/2020 in 2021.  The CFA also dismissed her application for leave to appeal in FAMV 113/2021, in the same year.

(3)  In 2021, she began her third legal action against Manulife, this time in the Small Claims Tribunal in SCTC 43420/2021, raising the same complaint in respect of the Policy. Her claim was dismissed in 2022.

5.  This judicial review leave application is the applicant’s fourth attempt in the courts to address her grievance against ManuLife (and the judicial officers who did not find in her favour in the previous cases).

6.  In her supporting affirmation, she set out her complaints against ManuLife, the procedural history of her previous legal actions, the reasons for why the judicial officers were wrong in finding against her or improper in handling court procedures.

C.  No Merit in the Application

7.  First of all, this application appears to be a collateral attack on decisions already made by the courts.  In any event, neither her complaints against ManuLife in respect of the Policy nor her complaints against judicial officers are proper subjects of judicial review.

8.  Any remedy for her grievance about the Policy would be found in the private law.  Such complaints are not amenable to judicial review.

9.  It is also clear that decisions made by judicial officers in discharge of their responsibilities of a judicial nature are immune from legal actions: see 莊裕安　對　關淑聲及其他人 [2019] HKCA 898, at §9.

10.  None of the applicant’s “Grounds” are reasonably arguable with any real prospect of success.

11.  The application for leave to apply for judicial review is, therefore, dismissed.  I make no order as to costs.

D.  Postscript

12.  I am handing down this Decision at the same time as another Decision [2022] HKCFI 2591, given in other proceedings HCAL 759/2022 where the applicant has made a plainly unmeritorious application for leave to apply for judicial review.

13.  Both applications strongly suggest that the applicant would habitually re-litigate cases she has already lost in different avenues, in what amounts to collateral attacks on matters already decided in earlier proceedings.  Judicial review does not exist for such purposes.  To seek to use judicial review proceedings for such purposes is an abuse.  To do so repeatedly risks the applicant being declared vexatious.