Palani Aishah & Co

On the court record

Palani Aishah & Co is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) are concentrated in commercial contract, shareholder and tort litigation. In the contract field it has appeared in a dispute over a collaboration cum sale-of-business agreement, where the plaintiffs claimed for breach and the defendants counterclaimed for breach of a shareholders agreement and a shares subscription agreement, engaging the interlocking obligations of parties to a business combination. A related group of matters concerned settlement agreements said to be sham agreements, testing whether they were valid and enforceable, whether there was any common intention to create a false impression, and whether consent had been vitiated by coercion under section 15 of the Contracts Act 1950, where police reports of alleged threats lacked corroboration.

The firm's tort and damages practice is illustrated by a negligence matter involving several tortfeasors, said to include neighbours, a contractor and a civil engineer, which raised the approach of an appellate court to the assessment and reassessment of damages, and in particular whether losses stemming from the loss of use of property are special damages that must be pleaded or general damages, and the treatment of aggravated and general damages.

In the settlement-agreement matters the firm tested whether police reports of alleged threats, lacking corroboration and failing to identify any offence, could establish the coercion needed to vitiate consent, a demanding evidential threshold. The reported profile is that of a commercial and civil-litigation practice engaged with the construction and enforceability of business, shareholder and settlement agreements, the vitiation of consent by coercion, and the assessment of damages in multi-party negligence, with a recurring focus on whether an agreement is genuine or a sham and on the proper characterisation and proof of the loss claimed. The firm's work reflects a practice serving commercial parties in disputes over the deals they have struck and the losses they say they have suffered.