Saiful, Roger & Co.

On the court record

Saiful, Roger & Co. is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) span commercial contract, company, employment-related equity and civil procedure. A notable matter concerns the protection of confidential information: the firm appeared in related appeals over allegations of breach of fiduciary duty and the misuse of confidential information, where a company alleged that its former employees had disclosed its confidential information to a competitor, a dispute at the intersection of employment, equity and trade secrets. Its contract work includes a dispute arising from a glove-supply contract entered into during the COVID-19 pandemic when global demand had surged, and a sponsorship agreement for a football league team terminated on the ground of force majeure, where the sponsor sought the return of the sums paid.

The firm's civil-procedure and insolvency-adjacent practice is substantial. It has argued an application by a party to intervene and be added as a defendant under Order 15 Rule 6 of the Rules of Court 2012, invoking the principle that all necessary and proper parties, but no others, should be before the court, and an application to amend a defence under Order 20 Rule 5, testing whether the amendment was a complete departure from the pleaded case. It has also appeared in a fortuna injunction to prevent the presentation of a winding-up petition where the respondent had obtained no judgment and the alleged debt was disputed, and whether the winding-up court was the proper forum to determine substantial disputes of fact.

In the sponsorship dispute the firm tested whether the pandemic could be relied upon as force majeure to justify termination, and whether the sponsor was entitled to the return of the sums it had already paid over. The reported profile is that of a commercial-litigation practice engaged with confidential information and fiduciary duty, pandemic-era supply and sponsorship contracts, the joinder and amendment of parties and pleadings, and the fortuna injunction that restrains an abusive winding-up demand.