T. Thavalingam & Co

On the court record

T. Thavalingam & Co is a Malaysian firm whose reported matters before the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) are strongly concentrated in employment and industrial-relations litigation, and in particular the judicial review of Industrial Court awards. The firm has appeared, frequently for the respondent, in a series of matters on the review of Industrial Court decisions on the grounds of illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety, addressing redundancy and retrenchment and the principle that retrenchment is not punitive, and the extent to which the High Court may review an award for both process and substance under section 20 of the Industrial Relations Act 1967.

A recurring subject is constructive dismissal and its limits. The firm has litigated whether an employee who tendered a resignation, considering herself constructively dismissed after an assessment she regarded as unfair, could establish constructive dismissal, given that the evaluation of performance and the assignment of tasks are management prerogatives, and a matter in which a claimant was held to have abandoned his employment rather than to have been constructively dismissed. It has also appeared in the dismissal of a managing director on grounds of alleged redundancy and restructuring under section 33C of the Industrial Relations Act 1967, engaging the requirement of concrete proof of a genuine redundancy and the influence of an incoming shareholder, and in a judicial review of the dismissal of an employee of a statutory corporation, where the question was whether the ultimate decision to dismiss was correct regardless of any procedural impropriety.

The reported profile is that of a specialist employment and industrial-relations litigation practice, engaged with the judicial review of the labour tribunal, the grounds of illegality, irrationality and procedural impropriety, the doctrine of constructive dismissal and the proof of genuine redundancy, an area central to the resolution of workplace disputes in Malaysia.