Jasper Hee Partnership

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the leave-stage control of statutory derivative actions under sections 347 and 348 of the Companies Act 2016, including the standing of a former director, and the supervisory review of the Homebuyers Claims Tribunal.

Jasper Hee Partnership appears in the corpus as counsel in corporate and administrative litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan).

A recurring theme is the statutory derivative action. Acting for the plaintiff in connected litigation involving Nautilus Tug & Towage Sdn Bhd, the firm appeared where a strike-out application raised whether a former director had the locus standi to bring or continue a derivative action on behalf of the company and whether he retained a sufficient interest in the claim. In a related matter it appeared where a putative defendant sought to intervene at the leave stage of a derivative action, engaging whether intervention was necessary to protect contractual rights, whether the court should hear the merits at the leave stage, and whether the orders would affect third-party rights, under sections 347 and 348 of the Companies Act 2016. These are the recurring gateway questions of the statutory derivative action, in which the court controls, through the leave requirement, who may litigate in the company's name and on what terms.

The firm also appeared in administrative law. Acting for the respondent in an appeal involving the Homebuyers Claims Tribunal, it was engaged where the court exercised a supervisory rather than an appellate jurisdiction over a tribunal decision concerning a defect-liability period and a developer's failure to observe a non-rectification clause, holding that the tribunal had not committed any illegality, irrationality or procedural impropriety warranting the quashing of its decision.

The firm's record is a corporate-and-administrative litigation practice engaging both the leave-stage control of derivative actions under the Companies Act 2016 and the supervisory review of statutory tribunals, and it reflects a chambers attentive to the threshold questions of standing and jurisdiction that govern access to these remedies. In both the corporate and the administrative field the firm's advocacy is directed at the gateway rather than the merits, whether a claimant has the standing and good faith to litigate in the company's name, whether an intervener may be admitted before leave is granted, or whether a tribunal's decision is amenable to being quashed only for a reviewable error of law, so that the practice is characteristically concerned with who may bring a claim and on what basis a decision may be disturbed.