Nazrin Nasir T. Anand & Co.

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the law of private caveats and developer-purchaser obligations over vacant possession, and the pay-first-talk-later principle governing challenges to assessment rates under the Local Government Act 1976.

Nazrin Nasir T. Anand & Co. appears in the corpus as counsel in land, property-development and taxation litigation, much of it argued in Bahasa Malaysia before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi).

Several of the firm's matters concern land and caveats. Acting for the defendant in one matter, the firm appeared where a plaintiff company, established to represent former plantation workers under a transfer agreement, sought to remove a private caveat lodged by the defendants and a declaration that the caveat was entered wrongly and without reasonable cause, the judgment recording that the plaintiff sought to membatalkan kaveat persendirian (to cancel the private caveat) over land transferred for housing development for former estate workers.

The firm also appeared in developer-purchaser disputes. In one matter, acting for the appellant, it appeared where a purchaser sued a developer after the keys to her house were, through a mix-up of addresses, handed to a renovation contractor, so that she found her completed house being renovated and uninhabitable, claiming that vacant possession had not been delivered and seeking liquidated damages and damages for loss of use. In another it appeared in an appeal after full trial over whether there was a concluded sale-and-purchase agreement entitling a plaintiff to specific performance, met by a counterclaim for double rental and vacant possession.

In taxation the firm acted for the defendant, a local authority, in a dispute over assessment rates under section 145 of the Local Government Act 1976, engaging the interpretation of holding categories, a notice of a new valuation list, and the pay-first-talk-later principle, under which a ratepayer must first pay the rate imposed and may then claim a refund of any overpayment. The firm's record is a property-and-public-law litigation practice conducted fluently in Bahasa Malaysia. The recurrence of land, caveats, developer obligations and rating disputes points to a chambers grounded in the everyday law of land dealings and the relationship between property owners and the authorities, where the enforceability of a caveat, the delivery of vacant possession, and the liability to assessment rates are the questions on which its matters most often turn.