A S Dhaliwal

On the court record

A S Dhaliwal is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters are concentrated in the civil and commercial work of the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), with a parallel line of serious criminal defence. Much of the civil practice is procedural and shareholder-driven. The firm has argued discovery applications, testing whether the documents sought were specific, relevant, necessary and in the possession of the other side; it has resisted and pressed striking-out applications under Order 18 Rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012; and it has appeared in a corporate-control dispute where an interim injunction was sought to restrain an extraordinary general meeting called to remove a board of directors, with the financial operations of the company said to be in deadlock. Related oppression litigation raised whether majority shareholders may themselves bring oppression claims under section 346 of the Companies Act 2016, and whether the court should intervene at a premature stage through short-cut mechanisms without adequately pleaded justification.

On the criminal side the firm has defended accused persons before the High Court in a grave prosecution brought by the Public Prosecutor (Pendakwa Raya), where after hearing submissions the court convicted on several charges and recorded the sentences, including in respect of one accused a sentence of hukuman gantung di leher sehingga mati (death by hanging). The firm's reported profile therefore combines shareholder and civil-procedure litigation, in which the recurring questions are the adequacy of pleadings and the threshold for interim relief, with capital criminal defence, where the stakes for the individual are at their highest. Across the caseload the emphasis is on the disciplined use of interlocutory procedure to shape a dispute before trial, and on scrutinising whether the prosecution or the opposing party has crossed the evidential thresholds the law requires before a claim or a conviction can stand.