Hafarizam Wan & Aisha Mubarak

On the court record

Hafarizam Wan & Aisha Mubarak appears in the reported judgments as a mixed civil, criminal and industrial-litigation practice, working mainly in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) with a matter in the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan). Civil procedure is a recurring theme, including the striking out of a writ and statement of claim under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012 in a matter involving a State government and a State corporation, and claims for the proof of goods and services supplied. A distinct industrial-relations strand concerns an appeal by an employer against an award of the Industrial Court which had held in favour of a dismissed workman, and the preliminary questions such an appeal raises. On the criminal side the firm appears both in defence, including a prosecution for an alleged rape at the accused's rented premises and the inferences to be drawn from the evidence, and in a corruption matter at the Federal Court concerning the operation of the statutory presumption under section 50(1) of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009 once the receipt of money is established, and the assessment of a witness's credibility by the trial court. Its corpus also touches land acquisition (pengambilan tanah) and appeals against decisions of the courts below. The counterparties in the corpus include corporate, government and trading parties. Acting for plaintiffs, respondents, appellants, defendants and the accused across these matters, the firm presents as a broad litigator whose corpus joins commercial and civil-procedure disputes to industrial-relations appeals and serious criminal matters, including the constitutional-scale corruption and evidence questions that reach the apex court. The corruption matter at the Federal Court is a significant one, since the operation of the section 50(1) presumption determines how far the burden shifts to an accused once the receipt of a gratification is proved, a question that shapes the conduct of every corruption trial. Its industrial-relations work, by contrast, places the firm on the employer's side of a dismissal dispute, testing whether the Industrial Court's award in favour of a workman can withstand challenge on the recognised grounds.