Phee, Chen & Ung

On the court record

Phee, Chen & Ung is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) span company, equity, legal-profession, housing and estate law. In the corporate and equity field it has litigated whether property registered in a company's name belonged beneficially to a director, engaging the company's separate legal personality, the indefeasibility of title under the Torrens system and the presumption of a resulting trust where the purchase money was provided by another, a dispute that pits corporate form against underlying commercial reality. It has also appeared in legal-profession matters, including a dispute over a solicitor's conditional undertaking issued by a legal assistant where the firm was discharged before funds were received and the cheque returned undeposited, raising whether the undertaking matured into a binding obligation, and a review of a Disciplinary Committee's findings against the standard that the court interferes only where the findings are manifestly perverse.

The firm's housing and estate work is substantial. It has appeared in appeals over the late delivery of vacant possession of commercial accommodation suites and claims for goods-and-services tax and late-payment interest, turning on whether the purchasers could rely on Schedule H of the Housing Development (Control and Licensing) Act 1966, and in a probate matter on the citation procedure and the revocation of a grant of letters of administration under Order 72. It has also litigated a land dispute where a successful bidder at a public auction who had paid in full faced competing caveats before the transfer was confirmed.

In the auction matter the firm acted for a successful bidder who had paid in full yet faced competing caveats before the transfer could be confirmed, testing the priority of the caveators' asserted interests against the bidder's completed purchase. The reported profile is that of a commercial and property-litigation practice engaged with corporate ownership and resulting trusts, solicitors' undertakings and professional discipline, housing-development claims and the estate and land questions that arise in the administration and transfer of property.