Dato' Joshua Kevin

On the court record

Dato' Joshua Kevin appears in the reported corpus as a commercial litigator whose reported matters range across insurance, contract, banking regulation and judicial review. In an insurance dispute he was engaged on the construction of a fidelity guarantee policy covering the fraud or dishonesty of an employee, where the question was whether the policy trigger was met — the act being required to be committed during the "uninterrupted continuance of employment" — when loss resulted from the encashment of forged cheques after the employee's resignation, and whether the theft of cheque books during employment sufficed. His contract work includes a Court of Appeal appeal over the termination of a tenancy agreement and the lifting of the corporate veil, where the court held that the facts did not amount to equitable or constructive fraud justifying the veil being lifted, engaging sections 91 and 92 of the Evidence Act 1950.

His reported appearances also reach the newer frontiers of commercial disputes and the reach of regulatory immunities. In one appeal argued around a friendly loan, the issue was whether repayment made through fifty Litecoins to the lender's cryptocurrency exchange account discharged the debt. In a matter under the Anti-Money Laundering, Anti-Terrorism Financing and Proceeds of Unlawful Activities Act 2001, he was engaged on the immunity of an officer of Bank Negara Malaysia under section 87 of the Central Bank of Malaysia Act 2009 and the wider immunity under section 77 of the anti-money-laundering legislation when enforcing that Act. He also appeared in a judicial review of the imposition of anti-dumping duties on imported fibre boards under the Customs (Anti-Dumping Duties) Order 2014, and whether the Minister of Finance was under a duty to give reasons. The reported matters mark him as a versatile commercial and regulatory litigator. In the anti-dumping matter the court considered whether a duty to give reasons arose on the part of the Minister of Finance when dismissing the application for a remission of the duties, and the interaction between the Customs (Anti-Dumping Duties) Order 2014 and the Customs Duties Order 2017 in fixing the liability of the importer.