Bodipalar & Partners

On the court record

Bodipalar & Partners is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) span company, banking, tort and civil-procedure litigation. In the corporate field it has appeared in winding-up proceedings addressing the appointment of interim liquidators and the principles governing leave to commence compulsory winding-up under section 451(2) of the Companies Act 2016, and in minority-oppression litigation under sections 346 and 347 of the Companies Act 2016, where a question was whether the misappropriation of company funds is better characterised as a corporate wrong under section 347 than as oppression under section 346. It has also litigated an allegation that a sale and purchase agreement and tenancy agreement were sham transactions masking an illegal moneylending transaction, with res judicata raised by reason of an earlier suit.

The firm's banking and tort work is substantial. It has appeared in a dispute over forged cheques argued under sections 24, 73A and 95 of the Bills of Exchange Act 1949, testing the bank's duty of care, whether it acted in good faith as a reasonable and prudent banker, and the reliability of expert evidence on the specimen signatures; and in a claim of professional negligence against a statutory auditor, raising whether an auditor owes a common-law duty of care to third-party investors for pure economic loss and whether sufficient proximity exists. Its civil-procedure practice includes an application to set aside a regularly entered default judgment filed out of time, where the court weighed the absence of any explanation for delay and whether the mandatory time limits had been observed. The firm has also appeared in a striking-out application in an agency-commission dispute, where a party not privy to the agency agreement was sued for conspiracy and unjust enrichment, and the court considered whether the claim against that party disclosed a reasonable cause of action. The reported profile is that of a commercial-litigation practice with particular depth in company disputes, banking liability and professional negligence.