Lee & Lim

On the court record

Lee & Lim is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) span public law, land, contract and civil procedure. A distinctive constitutional matter concerns the forfeiture of land: the firm appeared, on appeal, in a dispute engaging the right to property under Article 13(1) of the Federal Constitution, where land had been forfeited following an admitted mistake by the Land Office, and the court treated the quasi-criminal nature of forfeiture as demanding strict compliance with constitutional safeguards and examined the decision against Wednesbury reasonableness and the concealment of contradictory reports. Its contract and property work includes a dispute over the continued occupation of occupied land following the termination of a privatisation agreement, determined under Order 14A of the Rules of Court 2012 on questions of law.

The firm's civil-procedure practice is substantial. It has appeared in garnishee proceedings, arguing an application to set aside an ex parte show-cause order and the duty of full and frank disclosure, including whether the ex parte application and supporting affidavit had to be served on the judgment debtor and whether a failure to disclose a pending application to set aside a writ of possession was material. It has also litigated an interlocutory determination of the construction of a deed of settlement, whether one clause was to be read subject to another, and a limitation defence under section 6 of the Limitation Act 1953 raising the applicability of Ang Ming Lee. In the occupied-land dispute the firm argued, under Order 14A, whether the occupier retained any right to remain after the privatisation agreement had been terminated, an example of the summary determination of a discrete question of law. The reported profile is that of a litigation practice that pairs constitutional and land work, including the demanding safeguards that attend the forfeiture of property, with contract construction and the execution and disclosure questions that arise in garnishee and enforcement proceedings.