Burhan & Co

On the court record

Burhan & Co appears in the reported judgments as a criminal-defence practice with a supporting civil and probate docket, dividing its work between the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and appearing most often as counsel for the accused and for appellants. Drug prosecutions under the Akta Dadah Berbahaya 1952 (Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, Act 234) are the defining strand of its criminal corpus: charges of trafficking under seksyen 39B(1)(a), read with the possession provision in section 12(2) and section 40A, where the recurring question at the close of the prosecution case is whether the Pendakwa Raya (the Public Prosecutor) succeeded in proving the ingredients of the charge, and where in one matter a conviction under section 39B(1)(a) was set aside and substituted on appeal. Its criminal work includes prosecutions involving cannabis and multiple raids. On the civil side the firm appears in contract — including the formation of an agreement and the effect of a "subject to contract" clause in a letter of appointment — and in succession and probate, including an intestate estate, letters of administration and an administrator's fiduciary duties, together with trusts and equity, limitation and laches, and natural justice. The counterparties in the civil matters include resources and trading parties. Acting predominantly on the defence side in its criminal work while maintaining a distinct estate and contract practice, the firm presents as a litigator whose corpus pairs the defence of serious drug charges — carried through trial and appeal — with succession, trust and contract disputes, a combination that few practices of its size in the corpus display. In the drug matters the decisive question is frequently whether the prosecution established possession and knowledge to the criminal standard, and the corpus records both acquittals at the close of the prosecution case and a conviction disturbed on appeal, illustrating the range of outcomes such defences can produce. The succession and probate work, by contrast, engages the firm with the orderly administration of a deceased's estate and the fiduciary duties owed by an administrator to the beneficiaries.