Shearn Delamore

On the court record

A broad litigation record spanning corporate and public-authority liability, banking disputes and constitutional law, reaching the Federal Court, in matters that turn on the governing law and its application rather than on primary fact.

Shearn Delamore is recorded in the corpus across a notably broad range of matters, from corporate and medical litigation to banking and constitutional law, appearing at first instance and at the Federal Court. In one High Court matter the firm acted for the defence in a claim connected with the national heart institute, where the court held that Institut Jantung Negara Sdn Bhd is a separate legal entity from the Government of Malaysia, that the Government was not vicariously liable for the alleged negligence of its doctors, and that the claim against the institute's directors was unsustainable, so that a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012 had to be allowed to prevent unrelated professionals from being dragged through a trial. In a banking matter the firm acted for the plaintiff, Malayan Banking Berhad, in a claim for defamation tried together with the defendant's counterclaim for misrepresentation and unjust enrichment, where the court dismissed both the claim and the counterclaim and ordered each party to bear its own costs. At the constitutional end of the practice, the firm appeared as intervener in a Federal Court matter engaging the right to peaceful assembly under Article 10(1)(b) of the Federal Constitution and the requirement to give ten days' notice of an assembly under section 9(1) and (5) of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012, together with the doctrine of proportionality and whether criminalising a failure to notify the police disproportionately restricts a constitutional right. Across these matters the firm is recorded handling the interaction of corporate and public-authority liability, contested banking litigation, and constitutional challenges of general importance, the common thread being work in which the governing law and its application to the facts, rather than the volume of primary evidence, tends to decide the case. In the constitutional matter the proportionality analysis asked whether criminalising a failure to give the police ten days' notice of an assembly under section 9(5) of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012 was a justified and balanced restriction on the right of peaceful assembly.