Lily Chua & Associates

On the court record

A general civil-litigation practice recorded across construction and joint-venture, public-authority tort, and matrimonial finance, at both first-instance and appellate levels.

Lily Chua & Associates appears in the corpus as counsel across a spread of civil disputes rather than within a single specialism, and the reported matters trace a general litigation practice that moves between commercial, tortious and matrimonial work. In one High Court matter the firm acted for the respondent in a claim arising out of an alleged breach of a joint-venture agreement, where the contest turned on the standard of the work done — whether it was carried out in a good and workmanlike manner, with good and proper materials, and left premises fit for human habitation — and on a limitation defence pleaded under the Limitation Act 1953. A very different appeal placed the firm on the appellant's side before the Court of Appeal against a local authority, the Majlis Perbandaran Langkawi, over the discharge of statutory duties on the Pantai Chenang beachfront; the pleaded case invoked the duty under section 101 of the Local Government Act 1976 to supervise, maintain and remove trees that endanger public safety, framing a familiar question of how far a municipal council's statutory obligations translate into a private duty of care. The firm's matrimonial work is represented by a High Court maintenance dispute in which it acted for the petitioner, and where the central issue was whether a consent order recording a lump-sum payment of RM480,000 amounted to a global, full and final settlement of the parties' financial arrangements. That case drew on the doctrine of approbation and reprobation and on the reluctance of the court to reopen the terms of a final and binding consent order absent a material change of circumstances. Taken together, the record shows a firm comfortable moving between construction and joint-venture litigation, public-authority tort and family finance, and appearing at both first instance in the High Court and on appeal.