Arulampalam & Co.

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the allocation of liability for damage to buried infrastructure, the rights of occupiers under unregistered leases against a registered proprietor, and the necessity-and-relevance threshold governing discovery under Order 24 of the Rules of Court 2012.

Arulampalam & Co. appears in the corpus as counsel in negligence, land and civil-procedure litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi).

One matter concerned infrastructure damage. Acting for the defendant in a claim involving TM Technology Services Sdn Bhd against Pestech Sdn Bhd, the firm appeared where the question was whether the defendant had negligently damaged cables and infrastructure, whether it had admitted liability, whether the plaintiff had contributed to the damage by failing to label the location of the cables, and whether the defendant was liable for the full cost of the rectification works.

The firm also appeared in a land dispute concerning an unregistered lease. Acting for the respondent, it was engaged in an appeal over trespass to land, the rights of an occupier against those of the registered proprietor, whether an agreement to lease existed, whether a management corporation was bound as a successor in title by an agreement to lease entered into by the developer, and whether the action was time-barred.

In civil-procedure work the firm acted for the defendant in a discovery dispute, where a plaintiff applied for the discovery of documents under Order 24 rules 3 and 7 of the Rules of Court 2012, and the court examined whether the discovery sought was necessary and relevant, where the burden of proof lay, whether a lack of specificity was fatal, whether the documents were in the possession, custody or control of the party against whom discovery was sought, and whether the application amounted to a mere fishing expedition. The firm's record is a civil-litigation practice engaging tortious liability for infrastructure damage, the rights of occupiers under unregistered leases, and the discovery process, and it reflects a chambers attentive to the evidential and procedural questions that shape the conduct of a trial. Across these matters the firm is repeatedly concerned with who bears the burden of proof and whether a party can compel the production of documents or must instead prove its case on the evidence it already holds, questions that frequently determine the practical outcome long before the substantive rights are resolved.