Aida Haryani Salamon

On the court record

Aida Haryani Salamon's reported practice is in commercial and reputation litigation, appearing in the High Court and the Court of Appeal and acting for plaintiffs, defendants and respondents.

Her company work includes a Court of Appeal matter concerning CJ Polymers Sdn Bhd, in which she acted for a respondent on the transfer and consolidation of proceedings. The matter engaged item 12 of the Schedule to the Courts of Judicature Act 1964, Order 4 rule 1 and Order 57 rule 1(1) of the Rules of Court 2012, and the inherent power of the court — including powers existing before Merdeka Day — to transfer proceedings between courts within each High Court in Malaysia.

A substantial strand is defamation. In a group of related High Court suits she appeared for plaintiffs and, in a cross-action, for defendants, in a dispute among several individuals arising from statements circulated in letters. The suits turned on whether particular statements had been distributed, whether they referred to the persons said to be defamed — individually or as a group — whether they bore a defamatory meaning, and whether the defences of justification and fair comment were available. That kind of case, which pairs close textual analysis of the words complained of with the questions of reference and publication, is characteristic of this part of her practice.

Across these matters the practice combines corporate litigation — including the procedural questions of where and how related suits should be tried together — with defamation work that turns on meaning, reference and the available defences. It is civil litigation in which the recurring task is to fix precisely what was said or done, to whom it referred, and whether the law provides a remedy or a defence, whether the subject is a contested corporate dispute or a set of allegedly defamatory statements passing between individuals.