Chris Lee & Partners

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the protection of supporting creditors on the withdrawal of a winding-up petition under the Companies Act 2016, and the exceptional Ladd v Marshall threshold for admitting fresh evidence on appeal.

Chris Lee & Partners appears in the corpus as counsel in insolvency, intellectual-property and civil-procedure litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) in both English and Bahasa Malaysia.

One matter, argued in Malay, concerned the withdrawal of a winding-up petition. Acting for the respondent, the firm appeared where a petitioner sought to withdraw a winding-up petition on the ground of the company's inability to pay a debt, but two supporting creditors, who had given notice to appear under rule 28 of the Companies (Winding-Up) Rules 1972, objected, contending that a settlement agreement had been reached between the petitioner and the company without their knowledge, so as to prejudice their rights as creditors, the matter engaging section 472 of the Companies Act 2016 and the balancing of the petitioner's wish to withdraw against the interests of supporting creditors.

In intellectual-property work the firm acted for the defendant against Ferrero S.p.A in an application for an interlocutory injunction, where a trademark proprietor sought to restrain the defendants from dealing in products said to infringe its registered and well-known marks and to amount to passing off by misrepresentation, and the court examined whether there were serious questions to be tried, the balance of convenience and whether damages were an adequate remedy.

The firm also appeared, acting for the respondent, in an appeal from the Sessions Court concerning an application to adduce fresh evidence, where the court applied the three cumulative conditions in Ladd v Marshall, namely due diligence, materiality and reliability, emphasised that the power to admit further evidence is exceptional and restrictive, and that an appeal is not an opportunity to rebuild a failed case by instalments. The firm's record is a commercial-litigation practice engaging insolvency, trademark protection and the limits of appellate evidence. The breadth of the firm's matters, from the competing interests of creditors on a winding-up to the protection of a well-known brand and the finality of a first-instance trial, reflects a chambers comfortable across the commercial-litigation field and attentive to the procedural doctrines, whether the protection of supporting creditors or the exceptional threshold for fresh evidence, that shape how such disputes are ultimately resolved.