Shahabudin & Rozima

On the court record

Shahabudin & Rozima is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) are concentrated in banking, guarantee and civil-procedure litigation, with property work. A substantial group of matters arises from lending to a corporate group and its directors and guarantors. The firm has appeared in summary-judgment applications under Order 14 of the Rules of Court 2012 on term loan facilities, engaging a Credit Guarantee Corporation guarantee and whether a condition precedent had been fulfilled, the effect of that guarantee on the liability of the borrower and guarantors, and whether a repayment arrangement had superseded the original terms. In connected matters it has argued whether the restructuring of a facility discharged the guarantors, the acknowledgement of debt, and the interest-rate variation, and the striking out of a counterclaim that raised the same issues as the main claim.

The firm's civil-procedure work includes setting aside a judgment in default on the ground of an error in the date of the certificate of non-appearance, raising whether that error breached Order 13 Rule 7 of the Rules of Court 2012 and rendered the proceedings a nullity or caused a substantial miscarriage of justice, and an application to set aside a third-party notice under Order 16 on whether the claim disclosed a reasonable cause of action. In the property field it has appeared in a dispute over a sale and purchase agreement where the developer had been dissolved, vacant possession had been delivered early, and the agreement failed to address the conveyancing process, engaging the variation of the agreement.

In the third-party matter the firm argued whether a third-party notice disclosed a reasonable cause of action or was a plain and obvious case for setting aside, a further example of the interlocutory questions that recur in its lending litigation. The reported profile is that of a banking and civil-litigation practice engaged with the enforcement of guarantees and the discharge of guarantors, the summary-judgment and setting-aside machinery, and the conveyancing questions that arise where a developer is dissolved.