Lau Loo Chiew v Asia Pacific Investment Bank Ltd

Case Significance

Illustrates how a court resolves a disputed claim for payment under a referral or introduction agreement by weighing contemporaneous documents — including message exchanges — against oral testimony, and the evidential weight such documents carry when they corroborate one party's version of the dealings.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam, delivered by Hazizah binti Kassim JC after a full trial, concerns a claim for damages for breach of a Service Agreement dated 15 August 2022. The plaintiff, a sole proprietor trading as Y.E.S. Merchant Trade Services, sued Asia Pacific Investment Bank Ltd — a company incorporated under the Labuan Companies Act 1990 and licensed under the Labuan Financial Services and Securities Act 2010 — claiming USD849,697.95 said to be payable by the defendant under the agreement. Under the Service Agreement the parties were to introduce to each other customers requiring trade-services facilities, and the dispute was whether the plaintiff had performed his side of the bargain so as to earn the payment claimed.

The central factual question was whether the plaintiff had in fact introduced the relevant customer and thereby earned the sums claimed, and the Court resolved it by close attention to the contemporaneous documents. It found that the plaintiff's account of the involvement of an intermediary was supported by documents in the agreed bundle and by a WhatsApp message exchange between the plaintiff and that intermediary, and that these contemporaneous documents were plainly consistent with the plaintiff's assertions rather than with the defendant's version of events. The evidence of the defendant's chairman did not differ materially from that of its other witnesses, and the defence narrative, once assessed, did not displace the plaintiff's case.

On the balance of probabilities the Court held that the plaintiff had proved his claim against the defendant. It allowed the plaintiff's claim as pleaded in the statement of claim, with costs of RM30,000 subject to allocatur. The judgment is a useful illustration of how a court resolves a disputed claim for payment under a referral or introduction agreement by weighing contemporaneous documents — including message exchanges — against oral testimony, and of the evidential weight such documents carry when they corroborate one party's version of the dealings.