1. ) Shapers International Sdn Bhd 2. ) Shapers Malaysia Sdn Bhd 3. ) Mohd Shukri Bin Abdullah v 1. ) Halal Industry Development Corporation Sdn Bhd 2. ) Dato' Seri Jamil Bin Bidin

Case Significance

An illustration of how a collaboration between a government-linked corporation and a private organiser, entered to serve a national industry agenda, is adjudicated by the ordinary law of contract when it breaks down, the court resolving the claim and counterclaim on the terms of the agreement and the evidence.

This High Court civil suit at Shah Alam arose from the breakdown of a commercial collaboration to stage the "Halalfest" event. On the court's own account of the matter, the Halal Industry Development Corporation ("HDC"), a government-backed entity under the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry entrusted with advancing Malaysia's halal ecosystem, entered into an agreement with the second plaintiff to organise the event. What began as a cooperative initiative aligned with national industry objectives ultimately faltered, and the deterioration of the parties' relationship led to this action. The plaintiffs, the two Shapers companies and an individual associated with them, sought various remedies arising from the collapse of the arrangement, while the first defendant, HDC, mounted a counterclaim of its own. The dispute therefore placed before the court both a claim and a cross-claim growing out of the same failed event-organising relationship. The court framed its task as one of applying settled principles of contract law to the evidence duly placed before it, rather than to the commercial merits or the public significance of the halal-industry initiative as such. On that footing it had to construe the terms of the agreement governing the organisation of Halalfest, identify the obligations each side had assumed, and determine whether and by whom those obligations had been breached, before turning to the competing monetary and other relief claimed in the claim and the counterclaim. The judgment is of interest as an example of how a collaboration between a government-linked corporation and a private event organiser, entered into to serve a national industry agenda, is nonetheless adjudicated by the ordinary law of contract when it fails, the court resolving the parties' respective rights strictly on the terms of their agreement and the evidence adduced rather than on the policy importance of the venture. Because HDC is a government-linked corporation acting to further a national industry objective, the case also shows that such an entity contracts, and is held to the bargain it has struck, on the same footing as any private party, its rights and liabilities determined by the same principles of contract law.