Ismail Khoo & Associates

On the court record

Ismail Khoo & Associates is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) are concentrated in company, insolvency and land litigation. In the corporate field it has appeared in winding-up petitions under section 465 of the Companies Act 2016 and in the applications to strike them out under Order 18 Rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012, including a petition dismissed because the petitioner did not come with clean hands and had not satisfied the court that the grounds complained of justified winding up. A connected matter concerned a liquidator's application to be remunerated for work done between the date of the winding-up order and the date that order was set aside, raising who should bear his remuneration and expenses.

The firm's land and commercial work includes appeals on the indefeasibility of title under section 340 of the National Land Code, addressing a fraudulent transfer and the distinction between an immediate and a subsequent purchaser and the protection afforded to a bona fide purchaser for valuable consideration, where the burden of proof was decisive. It has also litigated a claim that a consultation agreement providing for a fixed monthly payment was in substance something other than the services it purported to cover, and estate and joint-venture disputes struck out under Order 18 Rule 19, including allegations of conspiracy, fraud and breach of trust among former partners and administrators of an estate. In the estate and joint-venture matters the firm confronted allegations of conspiracy, fraud and breach of trust among former partners and estate administrators, contesting striking-out on whether the pleaded facts disclosed a sustainable cause of action. The reported profile is that of a company and property-litigation practice, engaged with the winding-up remedy and its abuse, the remuneration of liquidators, and the indefeasibility and fraud questions that recur in Malaysian land disputes.