Gavin Jayapal

On the court record

Gavin Jayapal appears in the reported judgments as a commercial and public-law litigation practice, working across the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan) and appearing most often as respondent. Judicial review is a recurring strand of its corpus, including a Federal Court matter on the review of an Industrial Court award on the grounds of procedural impropriety, irrationality, illegality and proportionality, and a judicial review concerning a decision on the disposal of stray dogs brought by an animal-welfare society. Its commercial work includes breach of contract and the unlawful termination of a joint-venture agreement and its supplement, argued at the Court of Appeal, and an appeal against an order for summary judgment in a claim by a condominium management body for the recovery of property-management fees and other charges. The firm also appears in civil procedure, including an application to convert a plaintiff's originating summons into a writ action, and in a claim for unlawful-means conspiracy, and in insolvency-adjacent matters involving a company in liquidation. The counterparties in the corpus include technology, development and management companies and statutory bodies. Acting for respondents, defendants, applicants, appellants and plaintiffs across these matters, the firm presents as a litigator whose corpus joins judicial review — of the Industrial Court and of executive decisions — to commercial contract and joint-venture disputes and the civil-procedure questions that surround them, a breadth spanning the public-law and commercial fields. The Industrial Court judicial review is a particularly significant matter, engaging the grounds on which a tribunal's award may be quashed and the standard of proportionality by which its decision is measured. That the matter reached the Federal Court underscores its significance, since the scope of judicial review over industrial-relations decisions shapes the balance between the finality of a tribunal's award and the supervisory role of the courts.