Nethi & Saw

On the court record

Nethi & Saw is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) span land, civil procedure, housing and construction-maintenance disputes. A significant matter concerns land fraud: the firm appeared in appeals arising from a High Court judgment that had found against several individuals and a law firm, and separately against the Land Registry and its officers, for their involvement in the fraudulent transfer of land, a case engaging the responsibility of the registering authority as well as of the private parties. Its civil-procedure work includes competing applications under Order 14A of the Rules of Court 2012 for the disposal of a case on points of law, and whether the issues were pure questions of law suitable for determination without a full trial or were inextricably intertwined with disputed facts.

The firm's housing and construction work includes a claim by purchasers for a developer's non-compliance with the requirements of the statutory sale and purchase agreement, where the court considered whether the action lay on the agreement even where the statutory provision was not expressly stated, and a group of appeals concerning the account and inquiry into a maintenance fee payable under a maintenance agreement, and the correct liability period running from the date of the agreement until the expiry of the licence period in the last work order.

In the maintenance-fee appeals the firm secured a remitter to the High Court for a further account and inquiry into the liability period not covered by an earlier quantum order, tying the recoverable fee to the correct contractual period. The reported profile is that of a property and commercial-litigation practice engaged with the fraud and registration questions that arise in land dealings, the procedural determination of discrete legal questions, and the housing and maintenance-fee disputes that surround developments and their management, with a consistent focus on the statutory and contractual framework governing each transaction and on the accurate computation of liability over time.