Brijnandan Singh Bhar & Co.

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the role of expert evidence and the Bolam and Bolitho tests in clinical-negligence claims, and the intersection of the Montreal Convention 1999 and the Civil Law Act 1956 with Islamic inheritance law in an aviation-disaster compensation claim.

Brijnandan Singh Bhar & Co. appears in the corpus as counsel in medical-negligence and succession-related litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan).

A notable matter concerns clinical negligence. Acting for the plaintiff, a child suing through a litigation representative, the firm appeared in a claim arising from a ritual circumcision performed by qualified medical assistants, after which a fibrous layer developed over the glans. At the close of the plaintiff's case the defendants made a submission of no case to answer, and the court examined the two limbs of that submission, the standard of care and clinical causation, whether independent expert medical evidence was mandatory to define the standard of care and prove breach under the Bolam test and its Bolitho qualification, and whether the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur applied to a complex surgical procedure, noting that two cousins had undergone the same procedure simultaneously with the same instruments and facilities to successful outcomes.

The firm also appeared in a significant succession matter arising from the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. Acting for the respondents in one appeal and the appellant in a connected appeal, the firm was engaged where the court addressed the distribution of compensation to the legal heirs and next-of-kin of a deceased crew member, engaging a faraid order for distribution under Islamic inheritance principles, a stakeholder agreement and a release agreement, the Montreal Convention 1999 governing carrier liability, and sections 7(2) and 7(5) of the Civil Law Act 1956 concerning claims for the benefit of the estate and dependants.

The firm's record is a litigation practice engaging both the demanding standard of proof in clinical-negligence claims and the intersection of international carrier liability with Malaysian inheritance law in the aftermath of an aviation disaster. In each field the firm is concerned with how a claimant discharges a heavy evidential burden, whether by adducing expert testimony to establish a departure from accepted medical practice, or by tracing the entitlement of the heirs of a deceased through a web of settlement instruments and the framework of an international convention, so that the proof and allocation of a claim, rather than the existence of harm, is characteristically the contested question.