Ringo Low & Associates

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates how a construction-adjudication award under CIPAA translates into winding-up leverage under the Companies Act 2016, and how the courts treat such an adjudicated debt as indisputable for the purpose of a winding-up petition.

Ringo Low & Associates appears in the reported corpus as counsel in commercial disputes concentrated on insolvency, construction-payment enforcement and secured lending, argued in both the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan).

A recurring strand of the firm's work sits at the intersection of construction adjudication and winding-up. In litigation between Geo Hill Construction Sdn Bhd and Pesat Bumi Sdn Bhd, the firm was on both sides of the same commercial quarrel at different procedural stages: acting for the plaintiff seeking a Fortuna injunction to restrain the presentation of a winding-up petition founded on a statutory demand, and separately as counsel where the court weighed whether a debt founded on adjudication decisions under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA) could be treated as genuinely disputed. The winding-up proceedings turned on sections 465(1)(e) and 466 of the Companies Act 2016 and on the indisputability of a CIPAA adjudication award, including the creditor's ex debito justitiae entitlement to a winding-up order and whether the proceedings should be stayed.

The firm also acted in appeals raising the doctrines of in pari delicto and ex turpi causa non oritur actio, in matters concerning AJ Kasturi Sdn Bhd, where the central question was whether sale-and-purchase-of-land transactions were sham arrangements disguising illegal moneylending, and whether the trial court was plainly wrong to scrutinise the documents. In banking work, the firm appeared where United Overseas Bank (Malaysia) Bhd pursued guarantors for accrued interest charges arising after the winding-up of the borrower, the loan sum having been redeemed by the liquidator.

The common thread is contested commercial insolvency and the enforceability of construction and lending obligations, argued through injunctions, winding-up petitions and appellate review of findings of fact. Taken together, the reported matters position the firm as commercial-litigation counsel comfortable moving between the debtor and creditor perspectives, whether resisting a winding-up petition by injunction, testing whether an adjudicated construction debt is truly disputed, or defending guarantors against post-liquidation interest claims. The recurring reliance on the Companies Act 2016 and the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 marks the firm's work as sitting at the modern edge of Malaysian insolvency and payment-security practice.