Rajes Raghavji

On the judicial record

A High Court judge whose reported corpus is concentrated in construction payment, retention and security disputes under CIPAA 2012 and the Arbitration Act 2005.

Justice Rajes Raghavji sits in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and the reported decisions in this corpus are strikingly specialised in construction law and the payment, adjudication and arbitration machinery that governs the sector. Adjudication under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 recurs across the docket: decisions concern the setting aside, stay and enforcement of adjudication decisions, frequently over the second moiety of a retention sum where the defects-liability period expired without a formal defect being raised, and questions of late-payment interest and the certificate of making good defects.

Arbitration is a distinct strand. Decisions address the setting aside of an arbitral award under section 37 of the Arbitration Act 2005 on grounds of public policy and breach of natural justice, examining whether the award's reasoning disclosed a defect, and whether a final award constitutes a 'final award' within the meaning of injunction orders where arbitration costs were reserved to a further award.

The substantive construction disputes behind these applications concern the interpretation and performance of building contracts — for example whether letters of award contained a binding completion date where the construction period was tied to a master work programme, and the distinction between the 'modernisation' and the 'servicing' of plant such as a lift traction machine, bearing on the scope of a contractor's obligation. Security instruments also come before the court, including the enforcement of an on-demand corporate guarantee issued by a developer's holding company as security for the rescheduling of payment obligations. The corpus reflects a High Court judge whose reported work is concentrated in the construction sector, applying CIPAA and the Arbitration Act 2005 to the payment, retention and security disputes the industry generates, with the finality of adjudicators' and arbitrators' decisions and the deliberately narrow grounds for interfering with them a recurring theme. A persistent tension in the corpus is between the swift, provisional cash-flow relief the adjudication regime is designed to deliver and the court's limited supervisory role in reviewing the decisions that emerge from it.