In October 2008, Mr Justice Dato Vincent Ng, then a judge of the Court of Appeal, Malaysia was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
These were his thoughts:
“One morning at 3am, soon after I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, I was suddenly awakened and confronted with the thought of my mortality and the question: as I journey through mother Earth only once, how do I leave my footprints, however small, of this travel.
Then, I recalled that during my long career on the bench, with so many of my judgments published by the law journals, some members of the bar and even a few judges had suggested that certain interesting passages could be excerpted and compiled into a book form. I thought why not – if in the process of so doing, I could also raise some money for charity for the poor in this unprecedented era of the impending world economic turmoil and hardship. To bring about implementation and happy fruition of this project, the names of two lawyers quite readily came to mind. They had often appeared before me in intricate cases, and I must say, despite some light censures by me for improvement, they had consistently demonstrated focus, dedication, passion and doggedness in pursuing their clients’ cause before me – though I am indeed proud to note that they have not won every case before me. So both Alex Chang Huey Wah Esq. and Khoo Guan Huat Esq. became my natural choice to lead the team to undertake this unique task at hand. The credit should be ascribed to and abide with them for their hard work as this will be the first of such work in the annals of the legal history, and probably the last.”
So the co authors and I began to work and on the compiling planning for the donation drive.
On August 17, 2009, we are proud to announce that we have raised the sum of RM100,000 from donations in cash and RM20,000 in kind in the form of books from the Malaysian Current Law Journal totaling RM120,000, to set up the ‘The Justice Vincent Ng Scholarship Fund’,
managed by the Rotary Club of Pudu.
