George Town court denies claim for folding tables or RM400 after disputed gift message

The Small Claims Court in George Town has denied Nurul Aina Rahman’s claim for the return of two folding tables or RM400 if they could not be returned. Judgment was entered for Lim Wei Jian, and neither party was ordered to pay.

Nurul said she had left the tables with Lim temporarily when she moved into a smaller room. Lim said she had given them to him. The dispute turned on how to read a moving-day message and an alleged exchange that followed it.

A receipt in Nurul’s name established that she bought the two tables for RM400, a fact Lim accepted. But the court said the receipt did not establish what the parties later agreed about possession, the tables’ present value or whether they could be returned.

The message excerpt presented to the court recorded Nurul telling Lim, “You can have the tables.” Its ordinary wording supported Lim’s understanding that she was giving them to him. The excerpt was incomplete, however, and did not prove that no later messages existed.

Nurul’s account of a later collection message and Lim’s reply could support temporary safekeeping, the court said. It considered her account rather than treating the missing printout as proof against her, but the later exchange was not independently verified and did not outweigh the first message sufficiently to establish her better right to possession.

The judge did not accept Lim’s argument that a later message could never alter a completed gift as a general rule. The narrower conclusion was that Nurul, as the party seeking relief, had not proved the basis for it. The RM400 purchase price also did not establish that the tables were unavailable or worth that amount now.

Nurul argued that the messages should be read together. She said that minutes after telling Lim he could have the tables, she wrote that she would collect them when she had room, and he replied, “OK, no rush.” She acknowledged that she had no separate printout of those later messages.

Lim maintained that the first message was an explicit gift and that he had not agreed to store the tables. He argued that a later collection message would have been an attempt to reverse the gift and that his reply could have been courteous rather than an agreement to return them.

Nurul bought the folding tables before leaving them with Lim on moving day. She later asked for them back, or for RM400 if they could not be returned.

The judgment leaves the alleged safekeeping arrangement uncertain. It denies Nurul’s remedies because she did not prove a better right to possession on the hearing record; it does not undo the finding that she purchased the tables.