S. Raman & Co

On the court record

The firm's record illustrates the informed-consent standard for medical practitioners under the Rogers v Whitaker and Foo Fio Na principles, and the limited grounds on which a matrimonial consent order may be varied under the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976.

S. Raman & Co appears in the corpus as counsel across criminal, tort, medical-negligence and family litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), including in its appellate capacity, in both English and Bahasa Malaysia.

On the criminal side the firm acted for an appellant in an appeal against a conviction for dangerous driving, where the issues included whether all the ingredients of the offence were established, whether the element of driving in a dangerous manner was proven, whether a dashcam recording sufficed to establish it, whether the magistrate erred in admitting the Forensic Medical Officer's report, and whether the appellant's defence and mitigation were duly considered.

A notable matter is a medical-negligence appeal. Acting for the appellant, the firm appeared where a blood-donation procedure had resulted in a negligent arterial puncture during venepuncture, with a diagnosis of pseudoaneurysm and compartment syndrome, and the court examined the standard of care against the Transfusion Practice Guidelines, systemic and corporate failures in credentialing and supervision, the duty to advise on material risks and informed consent under the Rogers v Whitaker test and the Foo Fio Na principle, and the materiality of a rare but severe risk to a first-time donor.

The firm also appeared in road-accident litigation, acting for an appellant in a claim engaging the burden of proof under sections 101 and 102 of the Evidence Act 1950 and the plainly-wrong principle governing appellate interference, and in family law, acting for a petitioner wife seeking to vary the terms of a consent order under sections 83, 93, 96 and 97 of the Law Reform (Marriage and Divorce) Act 1976, where the court considered the contractual finality of consent orders and whether a material change in circumstances justified variation. The firm's record is a broad general-litigation practice, ranging from the ingredients of a traffic offence to the informed-consent duties of medical practitioners and the variation of matrimonial orders, and it reflects a chambers equally at home with the appellate review of a magistrate's findings, the specialist evidence of clinical negligence, and the discretionary framework of family law, argued across both languages of the Malaysian courts.