Shahnaz binti Sulaiman

On the judicial record

A judge whose reported corpus spans contract, arbitration, defamation, medical negligence and land acquisition across both the High Court and Court of Appeal.

Justice Shahnaz binti Sulaiman sits in both the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), and the reported decisions in this corpus span contract, arbitration, defamation, medical negligence and land acquisition. Contract law is a strong strand. Decisions address whether a letter of offer containing the core commercial terms, with no 'subject to contract' qualification, constituted a binding contract; whether the suspension of services for non-payment amounted to a repudiatory breach; and the interpretation of a long-term collaboration agreement's duration and extension mechanism.

Arbitration questions recur, including whether a Director-General of Insolvency, as liquidator, is required to adopt an arbitration agreement under section 49 of the Arbitration Act 2005, and the principle of minimal judicial intervention, under which a procedural breach such as an alleged one-day delay in submitting a draft award for technical review does not automatically invalidate an award. Defamation law features prominently, including whether the rule in Derbyshire County Council v Times Newspapers bars a public figure from suing, and the identification of the publisher of an anonymous digital 'poison pen' letter disseminated by email and messaging, engaging the presumption under section 114A(3) of the Evidence Act 1950.

Medical negligence appears through a decision on the duty of care and informed consent, the failure to disclose material risks, and a departure from a multidisciplinary tumour-board recommendation, assessed by the Bolam standard. Land-acquisition compensation under the Land Acquisition Act 1960 and the right to property under Article 13 of the Federal Constitution round out the docket, as does a privity-of-contract dispute arising from a novation to a concessionaire. Construction-arbitration questions also arise on the recognition and enforcement of an award and the deliberately narrow grounds on which one may be set aside. The corpus reflects a judge working across contract, arbitration, defamation, medical-negligence and administrative fields, resolving each matter by close attention to the instrument, the governing statutory scheme, and the standard of proof appropriate to the issue.