the consequential issues the complaints concerning adverse inference, the assessment of credibility, and the awards of interest and costs. D. THE LEGAL FRAMEWORK Appellate Intervention [22] The standard governing interference with findings of fact is the "plainly wrong" test: Gan Yook Chin (P) & Anor v Lee Ing Chin @ Lee Teck Seng & Ors [2004] 4 CLJ 309; [2005] 2 MLJ 1 (FC), where the Federal Court held that the Court of Appeal's formulation of a failure of "judicial appreciation of the evidence" was not a new or separate test but a formulation falling within, and explanatory of, the established standard. The principle was reaffirmed in Ng Hoo Kui & Anor v Wendy Tan Lee Peng (administratrix for the estate of Tan Ewe Kwang, deceased) & Ors [2020] 12 MLJ 67 (FC), where the Court declined to lay down a rigid catalogue of grounds and retained the "plainly wrong" test as a flexible guide. So long as the trial court's conclusion can be supported on a rational basis upon the material evidence, the fact that the appellate court might have decided differently is irrelevant, and a finding of fact not repugnant to common sense ought not to be disturbed. The various occasions on which appellate intervention has been held to be warranted were conveniently collected by Harminder Singh JCA in Nor Azlina bt Abdul Aziz v Expert Project Management Sdn Bhd [2017] 3 MLJ 763, but the categories there enumerated are illustrative rather than exhaustive, and each is in the end an application of the single plainly wrong standard. [23] Two features qualify the ordinary application of that test in the present case. First, the Judge who delivered the grounds did not see or hear the witnesses, and enjoyed none of the advantage of the trial court in the assessment of demeanour. Where a finding rests not upon demeanour but upon the intrinsic probability of the evidence read against the contemporaneous documents, an appellate court is in as good a position to evaluate it: Tindok Besar Estate Sdn Bhd v Tinjar Co [1979] 2 MLJ 229 (FC), where Chang Min Tat FJ observed that oral evidence must be tested critically against the contemporaneous documents and the circumstances of the case, and that plausibility must never be mistaken for veracity. The Federal Court reaffirmed that approach in Tengku Dato' Ibrahim Petra bin Tengku Indra Petra v Petra Perdana Bhd and another appeal [2018] 2 MLJ 177 (FC), where, adopting the observation of Chang Min Tat FJ in Tindok Besar Estate, the apex court held that a court may with greater safety rely upon the contemporaneous acts and writings of a witness than upon his later recollection or version of events, particularly where the witness has a purpose of his own to serve and has not accounted for his own documents; and the Court of Appeal applied the same principle in Guan Teik Sdn Bhd v Haji Mohd Noor bin Haji Yakob & Ors [2000] 4 MLJ 433 at 439, per Siti Norma Yaakob JCA, holding it incumbent upon the court to weigh and evaluate contemporaneous documents in order to test whether they support the oral testimony they are said to corroborate. Secondly, an asserted error as to the burden of proof, or as to the evidential status of a document, is an error of law that is freely reviewable, and to which the deference owed to primary findings of fact does not attach. Burden And Onus Of Proof [24] The incidence of proof in a civil claim is governed by sections 101 to 103 of the Evidence Act 1950, as expounded by the Federal Court in Letchumanan Chettiar Alagappan @ L Allagappan (as executor to SL Alameloo Achi, deceased) & Anor v Secure Plantation Sdn Bhd [2017] 5 CLJ 418; [2017] 4 MLJ 697. The Federal Court there drew the distinction between the legal burden under section 101, which is fixed by the pleadings and does not shift, and the evidential onus under section 102, which shifts from one party to the other as the evidence preponderates. A plaintiff bears both the legal burden of making out a prima facie case and the initial onus of adducing evidence to prove his claim; the onus shifts to the defendant only after the plaintiff has made out a prima facie case. [25] That proposition cuts in more than one direction. The respondent had to make out a prima facie case of the advance before any onus could pass to the appellant; the mere production of a signed instrument did not, of itself, shift the onus. But once a prima facie case of the advance was made out, it was for the appellant to displace it, and a bare denial unsupported by evidence would not suffice. [26] A contract requires offer, acceptance, an intention to create legal relations, and consideration: sections 2 and 10, and the definition of consideration in section 2(d), of the Contracts Act 1950. The principle that consideration is a prerequisite, and that the court will not spell an enforceable bargain out of the unilateral assertion of one party, was the burden of May White & Anor v Jack White & Anor [1998] MLJU 501 (HC), an authority pressed in different directions by each side. The respondent's real difficulty, however, was never the recital of consideration in the documents, but proof that the consideration the cash in fact moved. The execution of an instrument and the disbursement of money are distinct questions, and their conflation is, as will appear, a recurring feature of the reasoning below. [27] As to the standard of proof, the plaintiff must prove his case on the balance of probabilities. The appellant invoked Syarikat Batu Sinar Sdn Bhd & Ors v UMBC Finance Bhd & Ors [1990] 2 MLRH 228 (HC) and Aik Ming (M) Sdn Bhd & Ors v Chang Ching Chuen & Ors [1995] 1 MLRA 546; [1995] 2 MLJ 770 (CoA) for the proposition that a claimant must prove his claim by cogent and convincing evidence. With respect, neither authority establishes a heightened standard for a cash loan. The first concerns the sale of goods and estoppel by negligence and lays down no special standard of proof. Aik Ming is not authority for any heightened standard at all; its enduring significance lies in the rule the rule in Browne v Dunn that a party must put its case to the opposing witnesses in crossexamination, a rule which, as will appear, tells against the appellant rather than for her. The single civil standard is the balance of probabilities: Sinnaiyah & Sons Sdn Bhd v Damai Setia Sdn Bhd [2015] 5 MLJ 1 (FC). The absence of receipts or bank records goes to the weight of the evidence, not to its admissibility, and must be assessed against the whole of the evidence, including any admission by the party resisting the claim. Non Est Factum And Vitiation Of Consent [28] A person of full capacity who signs a document is ordinarily bound by it, whether or not she has read or understood it: L'Estrange v F Graucob Ltd [1934] 2 KB 394. The plea of non est factum is available only within narrow limits; it requires proof that the signatory laboured under a fundamental mistake as to the character or essential nature of the document, and that she was not careless in signing: Saunders v Anglia Building Society [1971] AC 1004 (House of Lords). It is not enough to show that the signatory did not read the document, or did not trouble to have it explained. The burden of establishing the plea lies on the party who asserts it. The appellant's pleaded challenge was, in form, put under sections 10 and 14 of the Contracts Act 1950 that her consent was not free. Consent is free, within section 14, when it is not caused by the vitiating factors enumerated in sections 15 to 18, namely coercion, undue influence, fraud and misrepresentation; and the burden of establishing any such factor, as with non est factum, lies upon the party who alleges it. E. ANALYSIS AND DETERMINATION Issue 1 — The Threshold For Appellate Intervention [29] The appellant's overarching complaint that the decision below is against the weight of the evidence and discloses no judicial appreciation of it cannot be assessed in the abstract; it stands or falls with the substantive issues, to which I now turn, returning to the threshold in the conclusion. I record only this: the preparation of the grounds by a Judge who did not hear the witnesses does not, of itself, lower the threshold for intervention, but it does mean that this Court owes no special deference to any finding that depends upon the demeanour of a witness, since the deciding Judge enjoyed no such advantage either. Issue 2 — Whether The Advance Of RM180,000.00 Was Proved [30] The starting point is the correct allocation of the burden. The respondent, asserting the affirmative of the loan, bore both the legal burden and the initial evidential onus of proving the advance. The first question is therefore whether he made out a prima facie case that RM180,000.00 was advanced; only if he did can the appellant's failure to rebut assume any significance. [31] In two respects the reasoning below requires correction, though, as will appear, neither correction assists the appellant in the result. First, the grounds treated the existence of the signed instruments as effectively conclusive of the advance, reasoning that there was "no dispute" that the parties had signed and that the appellant's denial was bare. Proof that a document was signed is not, without more, proof that the sum it recites was paid; to that extent the appellant's criticism is well founded. Secondly, the grounds did not engage with the concessions in SP-1's cross-examination as to the absence of records and the partial comprehension of the parties. These are real deficiencies in the articulation of the reasoning. [32] But the deficiencies do not touch the foundation of the finding, because the advance is proved not by the bare recital of an instrument, but by two pieces of substantive evidence emanating from the appellant herself, both admitted without objection. The first is the Agreement. It is not a unilateral recital; it is a bilateral instrument, signed by both parties and witnessed by an advocate and solicitor, in which (clause 2) both parties acknowledged and confirmed that RM180,000.00 in cash had been handed over by the respondent and received by the appellant on 1 March 2018. The second is the Statutory Declaration, in which the appellant, on oath before a Commissioner for Oaths, declared in the first person that she had received the whole of that sum. A statement made by a party that is adverse to her interest is substantive evidence of the fact admitted: sections 17, 18 and 21 of the Evidence Act 1950. [33] Upon those two admissions, fortified by the oral evidence of SP-1 and SP-2 that the respondent had advanced cash to the appellant on numerous occasions, the respondent plainly made out a prima facie case of the advance. The case did not depend upon the production of receipts or bank records. Once the prima facie case was made out, the evidential onus passed to the appellant to displace it: Letchumanan Chettiar (supra). [34] The appellant's answer to that prima facie case was not a single coherent account but a series of shifting and mutually inconsistent positions: that she had signed nothing; that she had borrowed only about RM40,000.00 and repaid it; that she had signed but been deceived; and that she owned no property at all. These are not different emphases of one account; they are inconsistent with one another. A tribunal of fact is entitled to regard an account that shifts in that manner as wanting in credibility, and is entitled to accept part of a witness's evidence while rejecting the rest. A defendant whose evidence at trial departs in this way from her pleaded case may, on that account alone, be found an unreliable witness: Siti Sakinah bt Meor Omar Baki v Zamihan Mat Zin & Anor [2018] 7 MLJ 487 (HC). [35] The want of contemporaneous financial records, and SP-1's inability to recall the dates and number of the advances, would be decisive if the respondent's case rested upon his oral testimony alone. It does not. It rests upon the appellant's own bilateral acknowledgment in the Agreement and her sworn admission in the Statutory Declaration, neither of which is displaced by the inconsistencies in SP-1's account of the mechanics of the advances, by the erroneous reference in cross-examination to RM128,000.00, or by the third-party transfers to Lim Kim Poh. Those matters go to the history and mechanics of the advances; they do not contradict the appellant's own admissions of receipt of the pleaded sum of RM180,000.00. On the totality of the evidence, the finding that RM180,000.00 was advanced can be supported on a rational basis and is not repugnant to common sense. That is the very exercise the authorities require. Where, as here, the dispute is one of quantum and the appellant's later account is self-serving and shifting, her own contemporaneous, signed and sworn admissions of the larger figure are to be preferred to her subsequent recollection, consistently with Tengku Dato' Ibrahim Petra and Guan Teik Sdn Bhd (supra). [36] I am conscious that reasoning of this kind must not be allowed to become circular: it would be no answer to say that the documents prove the advance because the appellant signed them, and that her signature binds her because the documents record the advance. The inference here is sequential, not circular. The appellant admitted that the signatures on the Agreement and the Statutory Declaration are hers. The Statutory Declaration is a first-person acknowledgment, on oath, that she received the whole of the RM180,000.00. Her case at trial was not that no money had passed at all she accepted that she had borrowed from the respondentbut that she had borrowed a far smaller sum; the dispute was therefore as to quantum, and upon that dispute her own signed acknowledgments of the larger figure are directly probative. She offered no coherent explanation for having signed documents acknowledging receipt of RM180,000.00 if in truth she had received only a fraction of that sum, her assertion of deception being bare and unparticularised. The respondent's want of receipts goes to the weight of his oral testimony; it does not contradict the appellant's own written admissions, and a party cannot escape a written admission merely by pointing to the other side's failure to keep records. The conclusion that RM180,000.00 was advanced is thus an inference drawn from the appellant's own admissions, taken together with the oral evidence and the absence of any credible explanation to the contrary. [37] The result on this issue is that, although the path of reasoning below was in part flawed in conflating execution with disbursement, and in failing to grapple with the concessions in cross-examination the conclusion that RM180,000.00 was advanced is sustainable on the admissible evidence, and rests on firmer ground than the grounds below articulated. An appellate court does not disturb a correct result reached by imperfect reasoning where the result is independently supportable on the record. Issue 3 — Validity: The Admitted Signature And The Plea Of Deception [38] The appellant's case on validity is that, even if she signed, she did not understand the contents because of her limited command of Bahasa Malaysia, that the documents were not explained to her, and that she was deceived. In substance this is a plea in the nature of non est factum, or alternatively that her consent was vitiated by fraud or misrepresentation under sections 17 to 19 of the Contracts Act 1950. [39] I do not approach this issue on the footing that there was no evidence of a want of comprehension. There was some. The appellant testified through a Mandarin interpreter, and her witness statement was not tendered because she could not read; her reliance upon the interpreter is consistent with, and does not undermine, her plea of limited command of Bahasa Malaysia. More significantly, the respondent's own principal witness, SP-1, conceded that he himself understood the Agreement only to about 80%, that the appellant's comprehension was partial, and that translation into Mandarin was required; and SP-3 admitted that she did not read or explain the contents. The candid position is that there was evidence capable of supporting a finding that the appellant did not fully understand the language in which the documents were written. The respondent, having called SP-1 as his own witness, is bound by these concessions even to the extent that they are damaging to his case: Kheam Huat Holdings Sdn Bhd v The Indian Association, Penang [2000] 7 MLJ 747 (HC). [40] The appellant nevertheless fails on this issue, and for reasons that do not depend upon understating that evidence. First, she admitted that the signature on the Agreement was hers, and a signatory is ordinarily bound by her signature: L'Estrange v Graucob. Secondly, non est factum requires not merely a want of full comprehension but a fundamental mistake as to the character or essential nature of the document, together with an absence of carelessness on the part of the signatory: Saunders v Anglia Building Society. The appellant established neither element. The evidence including SP-1's evidence that he translated the document for her into Mandarin, and that she was in the habit of taking a copy to her own lawyer before signing points away from a fundamental mistake as to the nature of what she was signing; and the documents were what they purported to be, namely a loan agreement and a declaration of receipt. Thirdly, the instrument principally in issue on validity, the Statutory Declaration, is a first-person declaration affirmed by the appellant on oath before a Commissioner for Oaths under the sanction of the Statutory Declarations Act 1960. To accept that she affirmed a detailed declaration of receipt and beneficial ownership while understanding none of it, and being deceived as to all of it, would require cogent evidence; none was adduced. Her acceptance in cross-examination of the bare proposition that she had been ditipu, advanced only after she had been confronted with the contradiction between her denial and her admitted signature, is not such evidence; the tribunal of fact was entitled to treat it as the expedient of a witness seeking to escape an admission. Fourthly, the appellant never put to SP-3, or to any other of the respondent's witnesses, the case that she had been misled as to the nature of the documents, or that she had told SP-3 she could not understand them; SP-3's evidence, indeed, was that the appellant said nothing to indicate any difficulty. Under the rule in Aik Ming, a case not put to the opposing witnesses in cross-examination is not properly established, and the challenge to validity fails for that further reason. [41] It follows that the appellant did not discharge the burden of establishing that her admitted signature and her sworn declaration did not bind her. The liability is, in the end, simply stated: money was lent and, upon the appellant's own admissions, received, and the law obliges her to repay it. That liability is established by the Agreement and the Statutory Declaration, both of which were in evidence; it does not rest upon the Statutory Declaration alone, to the exclusion of the Agreement. [42] There remains a discrete objection to the validity of the instruments, pressed by the appellant below and founded upon the Commissioners for Oaths Rules 2018. Rule 11(2)(b) requires a Commissioner for Oaths, before certifying a document, to read and explain its contents and any annexed exhibits where the deponent is blind, illiterate, or does not understand the language in which the document is written, and to certify in the jurat that she has done so; and Rule 11(3), read with Order 41 rule 3 of the Rules of Court 2012, requires the jurat to be duly completed. The appellant contended that, SP-3 having admitted that she did not read or explain the contents, and the jurat being said to be defective, the Statutory Declaration and the Agreement were void and incapable of supporting the claim. She relied upon the proposition that a defective jurat is a substantive irregularity that cannot be cured. Since the appellant gave evidence that she cannot read, the threshold of Rule 11(2)(b) may well have been crossed, and I do not dispose of the point on the footing that her comprehension was merely partial. [43] The objection nevertheless does not avail the appellant. First, the Statutory Declaration here is not an affidavit in legal proceedings; it is a statutory declaration under the Statutory Declarations Act 1960, tendered as documentary evidence of the appellant's own admission. A defect in the form of the jurat, or in the Commissioner's compliance with her certifying duties, may affect the standing of the document as a formal statutory declaration; it does not expunge the evidential value of the appellant's signed acknowledgment of receipt, which is admissible against her as an admission under sections 17,18 and 21 of the Evidence Act 1950 independently of the Commissioner's certificate. That is so a fortiori of the Agreement, which is not a statutory declaration at all but a bilateral contract attested by an advocate and solicitor, and to which the Commissioners for Oaths Rules have no direct application. Secondly, both instruments were admitted in evidence at trial without objection; a party who consents to the reception of a document, and who does not put to the attesting witness the case that it is a nullity for non-compliance with the Rules, is not well placed to impugn its admissibility for the first time on appeal. Thirdly, the purpose of Rule 11(2)(b) to ensure that a deponent who cannot read, or who does not understand the language, appreciates what she is attesting was, on the evidence, substantially served: SP-1 translated the document for the appellant into Mandarin, she signed in the presence of the Commissioner, and she thereafter conducted herself consistently with an understanding that she had undertaken an obligation. Maria Yusof turned upon its being impossible to say that the deponents had understood the affidavits in question; here, by contrast, there is affirmative evidence that the appellant had the document explained to her, albeit by SP-1 rather than by SP-3. The objection founded on the Commissioners for Oaths Rules, while not without technical force, therefore neither deprives the instruments of their evidential value nor leaves the advance unproved. [45] The argument founded upon May White does not assist the appellant. The principle that consideration must be proved, and that a contract will not be spelt out of one party's unilateral assertion, is not in doubt. But the liability here rests neither on a unilateral assertion nor on an executory promise for which consideration must be shown to have moved. It rests on a bilateral written agreement, witnessed by an advocate, supported by an executed advance money lent and, on admission, received which the law requires to be repaid as a debt; and it is fortified by the appellant's own sworn acknowledgment of receipt, admissible against her precisely because it is adverse to her interest. May White, properly read, is consistent with that conclusion and does not undermine it. [46] I turn to the appellant's contention that the respondent was an unlicensed moneylender. This was not a stray epithet, and I do not treat it as one. The appellant gave sustained evidence confirmed by her on oath through the interpreter that the respondent had told her he lent money without a licence, that he charged interest of about 100% with a further penalty if repayment exceeded three months, and that she had repaid some RM80,000.00 upon borrowings of about RM40,000.00; she described him as semacam ah long. The characterisation of the sum claimed as interest rather than as principal was, moreover, the first of the agreed issues at trial. The contention must therefore be met on its merits. It nonetheless fails, for four reasons. First, the claim sued upon is not the course of small borrowings the appellant described, but the RM180,000.00 recorded in the Agreement, which is on its face an interest-free friendly loan repayable upon the sale of the property and which stipulates no interest at all; even taken at its highest, the appellant's account of usurious dealings concerns transactions other than the loan in suit. Secondly, the Moneylenders Act 1951 is directed at the carrying on of the business of moneylending; a single friendly loan, even by a person who may on other occasions have lent at interest, does not establish that a business of moneylending is being carried on, and the appellant adduced no evidence of the statutory indicia multiple borrowers, advertising, or systematic lending beyond her own assertion. Thirdly, her allegations were uncorroborated, were denied, and formed part of an account that was in other respects internally inconsistent. Fourthly, illegality under the Act was not taken as a ground in the Memorandum of Appeal. For these reasons the defence of illegality is not made out, and the loan in suit is enforceable as the friendly loan it purports to be. Issue 4 — The Consequential Complaints [47] Adverse inference. The appellant complains that the court below ought to have drawn an adverse inference against the respondent for failing to call the person who drafted the Agreement and Statutory Declaration. An adverse inference may be drawn only where there has been a withholding or suppression of material evidence, and not merely because a party has failed to call particular evidence: Munusamy v Public Prosecutor [1986] 1 MLRA 292; [1987] 1 MLJ 492 (SC). The same limits were applied in Malayan Banking Bhd v Prabanah Manogaran Sultan [2021] MLJU 317 (HC), where it was observed that, the burden lying where it did, any adverse inference would if anything have fallen against the party bearing it. There is no basis here for an inference of suppression. The respondent called himself, his wife, and the advocate before whom the documents were executed; the absence of further witnesses to dealings that were, on the evidence, informal and undocumented does not bespeak suppression. If any party was at risk of an adverse inference for failing to adduce available evidence, it was the appellant, on whom the onus lay once the prima facie case was made out. This ground fails. [48] Assessment of credibility. The complaint that the court below failed to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses, and in particular to weigh the contradictions in the respondent's evidence, has more force as a criticism of the reasoning than as a ground for reversal. The grounds do not engage closely with the inconsistencies in SP-1's account of the mechanics of the advances, and to that extent the criticism is justified. But the dispositive finding does not rest upon the reliability of SP-1's recollection of dates and instalments; it rests upon the appellant's own admissions and upon the internal inconsistency of her several accounts. The deficiency in the articulation of the credibility findings does not, on the facts of this case, render the result plainly wrong. [49] Interest. The learned successor Judge, in the order appealed against, awarded interest at 5% per annum from the date of the Agreement. That was an error, as there was no contractual entitlement to interest running from that date. On an appeal by way of rehearing, this Court exercises its own discretion on the award of interest. The proper award is interest at 5% per annum from the date of filing of the writ until full settlement the conventional exercise of the discretionary power to award prejudgment interest upon a liquidated sum, at a conventional rate. That award is, if anything, favourable to the appellant, since it runs from a date later than the advance and rests upon no contractual stipulation. No error of principle is shown, and the appellant who could only have been worse off had contractual interest been available has no legitimate complaint. To the extent that any passage in the grounds of the court below might be read as awarding interest from an earlier date, the order of this Court governs, and that order awards interest from the date of filing of the writ. [50] Costs. The award of RM7,000.00 in costs is challenged as excessive. Costs are pre-eminently a matter for the discretion of the trial court, and an appellate court will not interfere unless the discretion has been exercised on a wrong principle, or the sum is so high or so low as to be plainly unreasonable. RM7,000.00 for a fully contested trial involving three witnesses for the successful party is well within the range of a proper exercise of discretion. No error of principle is shown. This ground fails. F. CONCLUSION [51] Returning to the threshold reserved earlier: the appellant has shown that the reasoning of the court below was, in the respects I have identified, deficient in conflating the execution of the instruments with the disbursement of the money, and in failing to engage with the concessions in cross-examination. To that extent the criticism in the Memorandum of Appeal is justified, and I have said so plainly. But appellate intervention is directed to the correctness of the result, not to the adequacy of the reasoning by which it was reached. The dispositive finding that the appellant received RM180,000.00 from the respondent and is liable to repay it is independently supportable on the admissible evidence, and in particular upon the Agreement and the Statutory Declaration, both admitted in evidence and both emanating from the appellant herself. That finding is not plainly wrong within the meaning of Ng Hooi Kui (supra). [52] The challenge to validity fails: the appellant did not discharge the burden of establishing that her admitted signature and her sworn declaration did not bind her, and the plea of deception was unsupported by cogent evidence and inconsistent with the nature of a statutory declaration affirmed in the first person. [53] The consequential challenges fail: no adverse inference fell to be drawn against the respondent; the deficiency in the articulation of the credibility findings does not render the result plainly wrong; the interest award, running from the date of filing of the writ, is correct in principle and favourable to the appellant; and the costs award discloses no error. [54] The relief refused below the transfer of the property and the fraud-based damages is not the subject of any cross-appeal and does not arise. The court below was plainly right to decline to order the transfer of property registered in the name of a person who was neither a party to the action nor called as a witness; that part of the decision is unimpeachable. [55] The appeal is therefore without merit and is dismissed. The judgment of the Sessions Court for RM180,000.00, with interest at 5% per annum from the date of filing of the writ to the date of full settlement, and costs of RM7,000.00, is affirmed. G. ORDERS OF THE COURT [56] For the reasons given above, I make the following orders: