Shamsul Bahrin bin Abdul Manaf

On the judicial record

A clear guide to how a High Court manages the interaction of company winding-up, civil procedure, personal-injury quantum and land-acquisition compensation across a busy first-instance list.

Shamsul Bahrin bin Abdul Manaf sits in the High Court, and the reported decisions here span a wide civil and commercial range with a criminal component, authored in English with tightly drawn catchwords. Contract disputes include the construction of a development agreement read as a whole and whether a plaintiff established an exclusive entitlement under it. Company and insolvency work recurs: winding up for inability to pay debts founded on non-compliance with a statutory demand within twenty-one days and the resulting presumption of insolvency, and Fortuna injunctions sought to restrain the presentation of a winding-up petition where the underlying judgment debt is disputed and an appeal is pending. Civil procedure is a constant thread — pre-action discovery under Order 24 rule 7A of the Rules of Court 2012, where the question is whether the applicant already possesses sufficient material facts to commence a claim, and setting aside a judgment after a full trial under Order 35 rule 2. Judicial review appears through a challenge to a State Authority's refusal to renew a prospecting or mining licence. Tort and personal-injury work is well represented: the quantum of damages for a severe traumatic brain injury with skull fracture and post-traumatic epilepsy, and a fatal-accident claim for loss of dependency by parents where the deceased worked in a family company. Land-acquisition matters address the adequacy of compensation, including a claim for projected future business profits on the compulsory acquisition of a petrol station. The judgments set out the governing rule or statutory test and apply it to the facts. Private individuals are referred to by role; corporate, governmental and institutional parties are named. A recurring feature is the court's attention to the precise threshold that each application must cross before relief follows, whether that is the discovery test, the setting-aside standard, or the statutory presumption of insolvency. The collection is a clear guide to how a High Court manages the interaction of company, procedure, tort and land-acquisition law across a busy first-instance list.