Elizabeth Lau

On the court record

Elizabeth Lau is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan) are concentrated in company law, estates and civil procedure, with a recurring focus on shareholder and succession disputes. In the corporate field the firm has litigated a derivative action, testing whether the plaintiffs qualified as complainants under section 345 of the Companies Act 2016 and whether they were persons entitled to be registered as members, and a connected dispute over whether shares devolving from a deceased shareholder to beneficiaries under a will constitute a transmission or a transfer, a distinction with consequences for stamp duty and registration. It has also appeared in winding-up litigation, including applications to appoint an interim liquidator, to strike out a winding-up petition and for an ad interim stay, alongside applications to expunge affidavits.

The firm's estate and civil work includes a suit to determine whether the contents of safe-deposit boxes belonging to a deceased should be distributed according to the last will, and, at Federal Court level, an appeal raising whether witnesses enjoy absolute immunity from civil liability for evidence given in judicial proceedings, the doctrine of the finality of litigation, and whether the tort of malicious prosecution applies to civil proceedings in Malaysia. Its civil-procedure practice includes striking-out applications where a plaintiff had entered a consent judgment or settlement with one defendant and the sustainability of the action against another was in question given an earlier consent judgment. In the winding-up litigation the firm navigated a cluster of interlocutory applications, to appoint an interim liquidator, to strike out the petition, to stay proceedings and to expunge affidavits, arguing over the order in which those competing applications should properly be heard. The reported profile is that of a corporate and private-client litigation practice, engaged with derivative actions, the transmission of shares on death, winding up and the estate disputes and immunity questions that reach the apex court.