A. Rajadurai P. Kuppusamy & Co.

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the supervisory review of Industrial Court unfair-dismissal awards, including the pleading of victimisation, and the measure of equitable compensation for a breach of trust independent of causation and remoteness.

A. Rajadurai P. Kuppusamy & Co. appears in the corpus as counsel in employment and commercial litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), including in its supervisory capacity over the Industrial Court.

One matter concerned an unfair-dismissal award. Acting for the respondent in an appeal against a decision of the Industrial Court, the firm appeared where a company had dismissed an employee after discovering iron ore missing from its worksite, the letter of dismissal citing poor performance, and the court examined whether there was cogent evidence to support the poor-performance ground, whether the Industrial Court had decided on an irrelevant consideration or failed to appreciate the evidence judicially, and whether the finding of victimisation required victimisation to have been pleaded.

The firm also appeared in a breach-of-trust dispute, where a finding of breach of trust had been upheld by the Court of Appeal and the defendant was to pay the plaintiff the value of shares sold in breach of trust, the court addressing valuation based on market price as the price paid by unrelated parties in an arm's-length transaction, damages in lieu of the restoration of trust property, and the principle that such damages are payable regardless of causation, foreseeability and remoteness.

In a further matter the firm acted for the defendant in a claim under a scaffold-rental agreement for unpaid rental and the non-return of materials and accessories, which proceeded to a full trial and in which the court allowed the plaintiff's claim on adjusted terms after accounting for the deposit and payments already made. The firm's record is a mixed employment-and-commercial litigation practice, engaging both the supervisory review of Industrial Court awards and the substantive law of trusts and contract. A recurring feature is the firm's engagement with the evidential burden that a party must discharge, whether an employer must produce cogent evidence to justify a dismissal, a trustee must account for property disposed of in breach, or a supplier must prove the terms and performance of a rental agreement, so that the proof of the underlying facts is characteristically decisive of the firm's matters.