G.K. Sritharan & Co

On the court record

G.K. Sritharan & Co appears in the reported judgments as a contract and civil-litigation practice, working mainly in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) with a matter in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). Contract is the defining theme of its corpus. Its work includes a sand-mining agreement terminated for an alleged fundamental breach and a failure to pay, the validity of an option to purchase and the damages that follow its exercise, a machinery-rental arrangement argued as a direct contract with attention to how the parties are bound by their pleadings and to questions of agency, and wrongful termination where the defence of illegality was not pleaded and the court distinguished ex facie from non-ex facie illegality. The firm also appears in construction disputes, including a civil appeal over a sub-contract progress claim in a matter involving China Construction Yangtze River (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, and in company law, including the members' voluntary winding up of a company and the appointment and effect of a liquidator. A distinct public-law matter concerns leave for judicial review where property had been seized by the police under the forfeiture provisions of the dangerous-drugs legislation, and whether the low threshold for leave was met given that a criminal investigation is generally not open to judicial review. It has also appeared in a family-law matter concerning a damages claim arising from a divorce. Acting for respondents, appellants, plaintiffs and applicants across these matters, the firm presents as a litigator whose corpus centres on contract — termination, options, agency and illegality — supported by construction, company and occasional public-law and family work, with the parties' pleadings and the proof of the contractual terms recurring as decisive issues. Several of its matters turn on the discipline of pleading — the rule that a party is bound by the case it has put forward and cannot rely at trial on an allegation, such as illegality, that it never pleaded — which gives the firm's corpus a strong procedural as well as substantive character. The public-law seizure matter adds a further dimension, testing the narrow circumstances in which the exercise of police investigative powers can be reviewed by the courts.