Roslan bin Mat Nor

On the judicial record

A High Court civil judge whose reported corpus concentrates on estate, probate and property disputes and the professional-conduct claims that accompany them, decided on a careful weighing of evidence and often written in Bahasa Malaysia.

Justice Roslan bin Mat Nor sits in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), and the reported decisions in this corpus are civil, with a marked concentration on estate, property and professional-negligence disputes, several tried substantially in Bahasa Malaysia. Probate and succession recur: one full trial — a perbicaraan penuh (a full trial) — concerns an alleged conspiracy involving an advocate and solicitor and a law firm said to have combined with a purchaser to acquire property paid for by the plaintiffs, while another is a probate dispute between siblings over a deceased's estate, in which the plaintiff alleged that a later will had been forged and fraudulently executed and sought to have an earlier will recognised.

Property and conveyancing disputes feature strongly, frequently overlapping with claims against solicitors for the manner in which a transaction or the entry of a name on a title was handled. Banking and security disputes also appear, reflecting the ordinary civil load of a High Court list, and the judgments give close attention to the burden of proof on allegations of forgery, fraud and conspiracy, which the court treats as requiring cogent evidence rather than assertion.

Because a number of these judgments are written in Bahasa Malaysia, the corpus is a useful illustration of the bilingual character of the Malaysian High Court, where the same body of civil principle — on trusts, wills, undue influence and the standard of proof for fraud — is applied and expressed in either language. Some matters also draw in a lending bank as an interested party where the disputed property stands charged, so that the estate or forgery dispute is resolved against the backdrop of an existing security. The overall impression is of a trial judge whose reported work centres on the resolution of family-property and estate conflicts and the professional-conduct questions that so often accompany them, decided on a careful assessment of documentary and oral evidence and a demanding standard of proof for any allegation of dishonesty.