Elaine Yap Chin Gaik

On the judicial record

A High Court civil and commercial judge whose corpus centres on shareholder-oppression and company disputes, interlocutory injunctions and receiverships, and the procedural mechanics that decide them.

Justice Elaine Yap Chin Gaik sits in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and the reported decisions in this corpus are overwhelmingly civil and commercial. Company law is a strong thread: several judgments concern the oppression of minority shareholders under section 346 of the Companies Act 2016, including disputes within family companies where shareholders complain of exclusion from management, removal as directors, denial of financial information and the dilution of their control. Related corporate work includes winding up on the ground of fraudulent trading and allegations of conspiracy to defraud a company's creditors.

The civil-procedure and interlocutory practice of the court is well represented. Decisions address the appointment of receivers and managers, and in particular whether such an appointment may be made ex parte under Order 30 of the Rules of Court or whether an inter partes procedure is required; the grant of interim injunctions to restrain the dissipation of funds, applying the American Cyanamid principles; the amendment of pleadings under Order 20 by reference to the three-limb Yamaha Motor test; and the disposal of a suit on a point of law under Order 14A without oral evidence.

Contract and property disputes round out the docket. One decision turns on whether a ten-business-day notice requirement in a put-and-call option agreement was mandatory or merely directory; others involve friendly-loan and indemnity claims, including a defence of coercion, undue influence and misrepresentation, and a contempt application against a non-party said to have knowingly aided and abetted a breach of a court order. Land-law questions also arise, such as competing claims to river and river-reserve land as between private parties and the State Authority. The corpus also includes a determination on a question of law under Order 14A of the Rules of Court, in which the court disposed of a dispute between two beneficiaries over a deceased's property without the need for oral evidence. The overall picture is of a commercial and civil trial judge working across company, contract, injunction and land disputes, and resolving the procedural gateways through which those disputes travel — receiverships, injunctions, amendments and points of law taken in advance of trial.