Muniandy a/l Kannyappan

On the judicial record

A judge whose reported corpus combines drug-trafficking trials and appeals with a significant mutual-wills decision and commercial disputes, across both the High Court and Court of Appeal.

Justice Muniandy a/l Kannyappan sits in both the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), and the reported decisions in this corpus combine criminal trials and appeals with commercial and succession matters. Narcotics work is prominent. Drug-trafficking trials and appeals under section 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 recur, several turning on possession where drugs were found in a borrowed car and the accused were in only momentary possession of it, and on the burden the accused must discharge — a point on which a trial judge was found to have misdirected himself by requiring the accused to prove more than a reasonable doubt where section 2 of the Act was engaged. In several trials a trafficking charge was reduced to one of possession where exclusive possession could not be established.

Succession law features through a significant decision on mutual wills, examining their irrevocability, the imposition of a constructive trust, the use of extrinsic evidence of common intention, and the effect of a subsequent will — a matter decided by a majority with a dissenting judgment, reflecting the difficulty of the questions.

Commercial and professional questions round out the docket. A share-subscription dispute concerns the failure to redeem and pay the redemption sums for redeemable preference shares and whether contingent securities were validly triggered. An arbitration appeal concerns whether time should be extended to commence arbitration where the delay was caused by the party's own avoidable legal and procedural errors, and a professional-negligence claim against an advocate and solicitor is dismissed where the plaintiff could not prove on the balance of probabilities that the firm's alleged misconduct caused its loss in an underlying medical-negligence claim. The corpus reflects a judge working across the criminal, succession and commercial fields, decided on the evidence adduced and the governing law, with the burden of proof — on the accused in the drug appeals and on the plaintiff in the civil claims — a recurring touchstone.