Sreenevasan

On the court record

Sreenevasan is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) span constitutional and public law, banking, strata and employment litigation. A significant constitutional matter concerns prosecutorial discretion: the firm appeared in a high-profile judicial review, brought by the professional body for the Bar, challenging the Attorney General's exercise of the prosecutorial discretion under Article 145(3) of the Federal Constitution and section 254 of the Criminal Procedure Code in granting a discharge not amounting to an acquittal, and addressing the leave threshold and whether the case fell within the appropriate, rare and exceptional category in which such discretion may be reviewed.

The firm's commercial and civil work is substantial. It has appeared in discovery applications under Order 24 of the Rules of Court 2012 against several investment banks, testing whether the applications were meritorious or a fishing expedition and whether discovery was prohibited by the secrecy provisions of the securities legislation, and in a matter on whether an external auditor appointed by a management corporation of a strata development owed a duty of care to an individual parcel proprietor, given that the audit of the maintenance and sinking-fund accounts was for compliance with the Strata Management Act. It has also appeared in a judicial review of an Industrial Court award brought by a hotel, bar and restaurant workers' union.

In the discovery matters the firm tested whether the applications were meritorious or amounted to a fishing expedition, and whether the statutory secrecy provisions governing central depositories barred disclosure, questions that recur where discovery is sought against financial institutions. The reported profile is that of a litigation practice with strength in constitutional and public-law advocacy, particularly the review of prosecutorial and administrative discretion, complemented by commercial discovery, strata-audit liability and employment work, engaged throughout with the limits of discretionary power and the duties owed by professionals and public bodies.