Kuruvilla, Yeoh & Benjamin

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates how section 114A(3) of the Evidence Act 1950 operates in a digital-defamation claim, particularly the need to establish custody or control of the device from which an anonymous publication is said to originate.

Kuruvilla, Yeoh & Benjamin appears in the corpus as counsel in commercial and defamation litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan).

A notable matter concerns digital defamation. Acting for the appellant, the firm appeared before the Court of Appeal in a libel claim arising from an anonymous poison-pen letter disseminated by email and WhatsApp, where the central question was whether the respondent was responsible for the publication. The court examined the presumption of fact under section 114A(3) of the Evidence Act 1950 and the meaning of the phrase originates from, the requirement of custody or control of the computer at the material time, and the evidential weight of metadata, holding that the failure to identify a particular device meant the circumstantial evidence was insufficient, and dismissing the appeal.

The firm also appeared in commercial litigation. In one matter, acting for the defendant, it resisted a claim by applying to strike out a writ under Order 18 rule 19 as filed for a collateral or improper purpose and as obviously unsustainable. In another it acted for the defendant in a contractual dispute over subscription agreements, where the question was whether a company had breached the agreements by failing to redeem preference shares and pay dividends, and whether such redemption and payment would themselves contravene the Companies Act 2016.

A further matter, acting for the plaintiff, concerned a tenancy in which a party had converted an office building into a fully fitted hotel and sought compensation for the cost of conversion on the footing that the landlord, who continued the hotel business after the tenancy expired, would otherwise be unjustly enriched. The firm's record is a broad commercial-litigation practice engaging reputational, corporate and restitutionary questions, and reflecting a chambers comfortable with the evidential complexities of digital publication.