Abdul Hayyi & Shukri

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates how the courts approach a dispute over private caveats where a development agreement contains an arbitration clause, and the burden of proof in criminal proceedings for the forfeiture of property.

Abdul Hayyi & Shukri appears in the corpus as counsel in land and arbitration-related litigation, together with criminal-appellate work, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan).

A significant strand of the firm's work concerns the interaction of court proceedings with arbitration in a land-development dispute. Acting for the plaintiff, a state agricultural-development corporation that was the registered proprietor of parcels of land in Bentong, the firm appeared where the corporation had sought the removal of private caveats lodged by a developer, and the developer sought a stay of those proceedings pending arbitration. The dispute arose from the corporation's purported unilateral termination of a joint-venture agreement for the development of the land on the ground of alleged project delays, after which the developer had lodged private caveats asserting subsisting contractual and beneficial interests. The matter therefore raised how the courts allocate a caveat dispute between litigation and an agreed arbitral forum.

On the criminal side the firm acted for an appellant before the Court of Appeal in a matter, argued in Malay, concerning the forfeiture of property (pelucuthakan harta), where the issues included the burden of proof, the evidence of the investigating officer, the satisfaction of the Public Prosecutor (Pendakwa Raya) and the court's own consideration of whether the property should be forfeited.

Taken together, the firm's matters engage both the substantive law of land and joint-venture development and the procedural question of when a court will stay its own proceedings in favour of arbitration, alongside the distinct field of criminal asset forfeiture. The firm's record is a land-and-litigation practice, attentive to the growing role of arbitration clauses in development agreements and to the enforcement mechanisms of the criminal law. The land matters in particular show a chambers instructed by a public landowner in a high-value development dispute, where the lodging of caveats and the invocation of an arbitration clause become the tactical instruments through which a developer resists the consequences of a terminated joint venture, and where the court must decide which forum, its own or the arbitral tribunal, is to resolve the parties' competing claims to the land.