Gunaseelan & Associates

On the court record

Gunaseelan & Associates appears in the reported judgments as a commercial and civil-litigation practice, working across the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and taking positions on both sides of the record. Contract is the most frequent theme in its corpus, and a distinctive line of its cases concerns settlement agreements said to be shams — whether such agreements were valid and enforceable or were a device lacking genuine effect — in related suits between trading companies and a common counterparty. The firm also appears in injunction practice, including an application for interlocutory and mandatory relief to preserve the subject matter of a supply agreement pending trial, in litigation involving Chevron Malaysia Limited. Its property and enforcement work includes applications to set aside an order for sale, and a challenge alleging that a judgment was obtained by fraud, together with disputes over a power of attorney. The corpus further records matters touching the legal profession, a letter-of-offer contract dispute, an appeal by an airport operator, and bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings, including an appeal to a judge in chambers to set aside a bankruptcy-related order. Its counterparties in the corpus are largely corporate, spanning trading, aviation and development sectors. Acting for plaintiffs, defendants, respondents and appellants in roughly even measure, the firm presents as a general commercial litigator whose corpus centres on contract and settlement-agreement disputes, injunctions and the enforcement and setting aside of orders, complemented by insolvency and professional matters. Its settlement-agreement disputes are a particular strength, requiring the court to decide whether an executed agreement reflects a genuine bargain or is a sham designed to give a false appearance, and whether it is valid and enforceable against the parties who signed it. The firm's injunction and set-aside work shows a practice comfortable with the interlocutory stage, where the balance of convenience and the preservation of the subject matter are decided before any trial, and its appearances in the Court of Appeal indicate that the questions it argues are carried up for review rather than resolved once and for all at first instance.