Brendan Navin Siva

On the court record

Brendan Navin Siva appears in the reported corpus as a civil and commercial litigator, with company disputes, land and defamation among his reported matters across the High Court and Court of Appeal. In a company-law matter he was engaged in a derivative action concerning a director's fiduciary duties under sections 213 and 218 of the Companies Act 2016, where the allegation was that the director had diverted corporate opportunities, assets and business to a competing entity, used forged documents and failed to disclose matters to a co-shareholder, raising whether the conduct was oppressive, unfairly prejudicial or in breach of the duty of fidelity. In a related Court of Appeal matter he appeared on the transfer and consolidation of proceedings, engaging item 12 of the Schedule to the Courts of Judicature Act 1964, Orders 4 and 57 of the Rules of Court 2012 and the court's inherent power to move proceedings between courts.

His reported work also reaches land and reputation. In a tort claim argued in Bahasa Malaysia he acted on a dispute over pencerobohan dan pendudukan tanah secara tidak sah (unlawful trespass upon and occupation of land), where the court considered the rights of the registered proprietor and whether there was fraud, misrepresentation or forgery capable of defeating title under Seksyen 340(2) Kanun Tanah Negara (section 340(2) of the National Land Code), applying the maxim that one who comes into equity must come with clean hands. He was also engaged in a defamation action concerning written statements said to have been distributed, where the defences of justification and fair comment were in issue and the court examined whether the words referred to the claimants and were defamatory. The reported matters mark him as counsel across corporate, land and defamation litigation. In the defamation action the court also examined whether the impugned statements had in fact been distributed or caused to be distributed by the party sued, and whether, read as a whole, the words were capable of referring to each of the several persons who complained of them and were defamatory of them.