P.S. Ranjan & Co.

On the court record

P.S. Ranjan & Co. appears in the reported judgments as a medical-negligence litigation practice acting overwhelmingly for plaintiffs, working mainly in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) with matters in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). Its corpus is defined by claims brought by patients and their families against hospitals and doctors. The recurring themes include the doctor's duty to advise and the failure to disclose alternatives to a proposed procedure — for example an endoscopic resection — and the standard of care in the management of a pregnancy, where a cardiotocograph reading showed a baby in distress and the issue was delay in the decision to deliver. The firm's work engages the ingredients of a negligence claim: duty of care, breach, and causation, together with the assessment of damages for the resulting injury, and it appears in the interlocutory and evidential contests that attend such litigation, including applications for the discovery of medical documents and applications to intervene. A recurring procedural theme is whether a plaintiff has come to court with clean hands. Because it acts so consistently on the patient's side, the firm functions in the corpus as a claimant's medical-negligence specialist — the counterpart to the hospital-defence practices that appear against it — and its counterparties are predominantly private and public hospital operators, among them Sunway Medical Centre Sdn. Bhd., Institut Jantung Negara Sdn Bhd, Sentosa Medical Centre Sdn Bhd and Rawang Specialist Hospital Sdn Bhd. Its appearances in the Court of Appeal show these claims being carried up for a review of both liability and quantum. Taken together, the reported matters portray a firm devoted to holding medical institutions and practitioners to account for lapses in the standard of care owed to patients, rather than to general commercial or criminal work. The strand of cases concerning consent and the failure to warn of the material risks and alternatives to a procedure is a particularly recurring feature, reflecting the modern emphasis in medical law on a patient's right to be adequately informed before agreeing to treatment, and the firm's corpus repeatedly puts that duty in issue.