Lim Hock Leng

On the judicial record

Shows a Court of Appeal judge engaging across drug appeals, CIPAA adjudication, liquidation, prosecutorial-discretion judicial review, contract formation and arbitration, including a challenge to the reach of a WIPO panel decision.

Lim Hock Leng sits in the Court of Appeal, and this collection captures the wide review function of the intermediate appellate court. Criminal appeals feature prominently, including challenges to the validity in law of a charge under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 where the evidence of prosecution witnesses was said to be at odds with one another. Construction and payment law recurs through the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA): appeals against a decision setting aside an adjudication decision, the enforcement of an adjudication decision, and whether sums were due or payable such that an obligation to pay arose. Company and insolvency questions appear in appeals concerning the retrospective ratification of a liquidator's fees, the wholesale delegation of liquidation duties, and issues of res judicata under the winding-up provisions of the Companies Act 1965. Public and constitutional law is engaged in a judicial-review appeal touching prosecutorial discretion under Article 145(3) of the Federal Constitution and section 254 of the Criminal Procedure Code, addressing the leave threshold and a discontinuance not amounting to acquittal. Contract appeals test whether an unsigned draft sale-and-purchase agreement was a concluded and binding contract despite later drafts. Arbitration features in an appeal refusing to extend time to commence arbitration where the delay was of the appellant's own making, and jurisdiction is examined in an appeal asking whether a Malaysian court may set aside a decision of a World Intellectual Property Organization administrative panel. Because the Court of Appeal sits in panels, these decisions reflect collective reasoning to which this judge contributed and guide the courts below. Private individuals are referred to by role; corporate, professional and governmental parties are named. Across the collection the recurring thread is the appellate function itself: identifying whether the court below applied the correct legal test and intervening only where it did not. The collection shows how a single appellate judge engages across crime, construction adjudication, insolvency, public law, contract and arbitration.