Chia Eng Yi

On the court record

Chia Eng Yi appears in the corpus as counsel across a spread of private-law disputes — housing development, succession and insolvency — argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). One Court of Appeal matter, appearing for the appellant developer, concerned liquidated ascertained damages for late delivery of vacant possession, and specifically the question, before the Tribunal Tuntutan Pembeli Rumah (the Homebuyer Claims Tribunal) and then on appeal, of when time begins to run: the court held, following the Federal Court's decision in PJD Regency Sdn Bhd v Tribunal Tuntutan Pembeli Rumah, that the period is calculated from the date of payment of the booking fee rather than from the date of the sale and purchase agreement. A second matter, in the High Court and appearing for the defendant, was a probate and succession dispute over the validity of competing wills — whether the instruments were duly executed, whether the testator had testamentary capacity, and whether suspicious circumstances surrounded their making — together with an interlocutory application under the Rules of Court 2012 about the order in which the parties should open and close their respective cases. The third matter, again in the High Court and appearing for the respondent, was an insolvency contest in which a judgment debtor sought to set aside a bankruptcy notice, arguing among other things that the decision on which the notice was premised was neither final nor conclusive, that the notice was void in limine, and that no act of bankruptcy had been committed. The common thread across these appearances is a builder's and litigator's practice at the intersection of consumer housing protection, private succession and the machinery of bankruptcy — statutory construction of protective legislation on one hand, and the careful management of contested facts and procedure on the other.