Jeffrey Tan & Chng

On the court record

The firm's record includes a Federal Court challenge testing the constitutional limits of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 on the right to assembly, alongside strata-governance litigation over unauthorised works in subdivided buildings.

Jeffrey Tan & Chng appears in the corpus as counsel across strata management, constitutional law and commercial litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and reaching the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan).

In strata work the firm acted for the plaintiff, a joint management body, in a claim against co-proprietors of a condominium unit over renovations, installations and structures allegedly carried out without the body's prior written approval, the defendants contending that the works had been approved by the developer and the local authority and counterclaiming over an unbuilt planter box and a refusal to approve works. After a full trial the court allowed the joint management body's claim, granting declaratory and injunctive relief and directing that damages be assessed.

The firm's most significant matter is a constitutional challenge that reached the Federal Court, where, acting for the applicant, the firm was engaged on the right to peaceful assembly under Article 10(1)(b) of the Federal Constitution and the permissible restrictions under Article 10(2)(b), together with equality and proportionality under Article 8(1). The challenge concerned the requirement in section 9(1) and (5) of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 to give the police ten days' notice of an assembly, and whether criminalising a failure to notify under section 9(5) disproportionately restricted the constitutional right.

The firm also appeared for plaintiffs in an assessment of damages under Order 37 rule 1 of the Rules of Court 2012, and in an application for a Mareva injunction where the court examined whether there was a good arguable case and a real risk of the dissipation of assets. The firm's record combines strata-governance litigation with constitutional and commercial work of real significance. That a single chambers should appear both in the everyday enforcement of a joint management body's rules and in an apex-court challenge to the constitutionality of a criminal restriction on public assembly points to a practice willing to take on questions of public importance while maintaining the bread-and-butter litigation that supports it, and comfortable moving from the assessment of damages to the framing of a constitutional argument.