Zaid Ibrahim Suflan T H Liew & Partners

On the court record

Zaid Ibrahim Suflan T H Liew & Partners appears in the reported judgments as a civil, company and commercial-litigation practice, working mainly in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) with a matter in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and appearing most often as respondent. Civil procedure is a recurring theme, including applications to strike out certain portions of a party's pleadings and affidavit, engaging the court's power under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012 to strike out where a pleading discloses no reasonable cause of action or defence, and applications for an extension of time to file a notice of appeal, where the court exercises its discretion. Its company-law work includes winding-up petitions on the just-and-equitable ground founded on a breakdown of mutual trust and confidence, and the stay of such a petition together with the appointment of an interim liquidator. The firm also appears in a matter concerning leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal under section 68(1)(a) of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964, in judicial review challenging a local authority's decision to demolish stalls, in personal-injury quantum appeals, and in a defamation matter involving a newspaper publisher. The counterparties in the corpus include corporate parties and a media company. Acting for respondents, plaintiffs, defendants, petitioners and appellants across these matters, the firm presents as a general commercial litigator whose corpus joins civil-procedure and striking-out contests to company winding-up, judicial-review, personal-injury and defamation work, a breadth consistent with a broad disputes practice rather than a narrow specialism. The striking-out matters are a recurring feature, engaging the court's power to excise parts of a pleading or affidavit that are unsustainable or improper before a matter proceeds to trial, and the firm's corpus shows it deploying that power to narrow the issues in dispute. Its winding-up work, founded on the breakdown of trust and confidence between the participants in a company, applies the same disciplined approach to the dissolution of failed commercial relationships.