Nadzarin Kuok Puthucheary & Tan

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates how the courts balance a creditor's security against a debtor's appeal in conditional-stay applications, and the standards of acceptable quality and fitness for purpose under the Consumer Protection Act 1999.

Nadzarin Kuok Puthucheary & Tan appears in the corpus as counsel in civil litigation spanning stay applications, professional negligence, joint-tortfeasor liability and consumer protection, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan).

One matter concerned a conditional stay of execution. Acting for the appellant, the firm appeared where the court considered whether a conditional stay should be granted given a risk of dissipation of the judgment sum, and whether a condition requiring payment to the solicitors for both parties on an equal basis would itself lead to the dissipation of that sum, a question about how the courts balance a judgment creditor's security against a debtor's right to appeal.

The firm also appeared in litigation over professional negligence, in connected proceedings involving Teguh Asiamas Sdn Bhd and a firm of solicitors, where a breach of the duty of care giving rise to professional negligence was in issue. In a further matter, acting for the plaintiff on behalf of the Linggiu Valley Orang Asli (Jakuns) Trust, the firm appeared where the court considered whether it had jurisdiction to amend a perfected High Court order to make certain defendants jointly and severally liable as joint tortfeasors, and whether the application was time-barred or offended the principle of res judicata.

In consumer work the firm acted for the respondent in a Sessions Court appeal, argued in Malay, over damages awarded to a car purchaser for inconvenience and distress caused by defects, engaging the standards of acceptable quality and fitness for purpose under sections 32 and 33 of the Consumer Protection Act 1999. The firm's record is a general civil-litigation practice engaging both the procedural questions that surround the enforcement and amendment of judgments and the substantive law of negligence and consumer protection. The recurring emphasis on the finality and reach of court orders, from whether a perfected judgment may be reopened to make defendants jointly liable to the conditions on which execution may be stayed, marks the firm as counsel comfortable with the machinery by which a judgment is enforced or resisted after it has been given.