Mah-Kamariyah & Philip Koh

On the court record

Mah-Kamariyah & Philip Koh appears in the reported judgments as a company and commercial-litigation practice, working across the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and appearing most often for plaintiffs. Company law is a defining strand of its corpus, including minority-oppression claims — such as a Court of Appeal matter on whether the removal of a shareholder from management, with his shares locked in, was oppressive — and questions of company law and insolvency. A distinctive strand concerns contempt of court, including the non-party liability of a person who aids and abets a breach of a court order with knowledge of the order, and committal proceedings brought against the directors of a company. The firm also appears in contract, including a Court of Appeal matter on the legal effect of a letter of appointment and whether it was invalid, and summary judgment under Order 14 rule 1 of the Rules of Court 2012 in a claim for breach of contract. Its civil-procedure work includes interlocutory appeals to a judge in chambers, and its property work includes a dispute involving a registered lessee of land and the rental of that land together with the main building on it. The counterparties in the corpus include listed and private companies and their controllers. Acting most often for plaintiffs, the firm presents as a corporate-disputes practice whose corpus centres on shareholder oppression, contempt of court and the enforcement of court orders, and contract, with the non-party contempt matters a particularly distinctive feature — engaging the principle that a stranger to proceedings who knowingly assists a breach of an order may be held liable for contempt. That principle extends the reach of the court's coercive power beyond the parties bound by an order to those who, with knowledge of it, help to defeat it, and the firm's corpus shows that reach being tested against company directors and other non-parties. Its oppression and letter-of-appointment matters, meanwhile, keep the practice anchored in the mainstream of company and contract disputes.