Aswandi Hashim & Co.

On the court record

Aswandi Hashim & Co. is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) are concentrated in administrative and public law, and in particular judicial review. Several matters proceed by way of an application for leave for judicial review under Order 53 of the Rules of Court 2012, seeking declarations or orders of certiorari and mandamus. The firm has challenged the inspection and decision of a labour department, arguing over whether the applicant had met the threshold for leave in the face of a preliminary objection by the Attorney General; it has questioned whether a disciplinary committee was lawfully and duly constituted and whether its decision was tainted by procedural impropriety; and it has tested the boundaries of justiciability in a challenge to the transfer of a public officer in the armed forces, where the court considered whether a transfer order is a non-justiciable management prerogative that the court should not disturb on grounds of personal hardship.

The firm's work also reaches into company law and industrial relations. It has appeared in an originating summons under sections 103 and 602 of the Companies Act 2016 concerning the transfer of shares in a company's share register, and in an appeal against a decision of the Industrial Court chairman that an employee had been dismissed without just cause, with an award of back wages in issue. In a further judicial review the firm challenged the composition and procedural propriety of a disciplinary appeal committee, contending that the decision had rested solely on evidence the applicant had given to the anti-corruption authorities and questioning whether the committee had been lawfully and duly constituted. The reported profile is that of a public-law and administrative-litigation practice, engaged with the recurring questions of judicial review, the threshold for leave, the constitution and fairness of decision-making bodies, and the limits of the court's supervisory role over executive and management decisions.