Dato' Kamaruzaman Arif

On the court record

Dato' Kamaruzaman Arif appears in the corpus in commercial and public-law disputes, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), with matters ranging from joint-venture contracts to the boundary between the civil and Syariah jurisdictions. In one High Court matter, appearing for the defendant, the dispute concerned a joint-venture agreement said to have lapsed or been terminated; the court framed the questions in Malay — a 'Perjanjian Usahasama' (joint-venture agreement) alleged to have 'luput/tamat tempoh/ditamatkan' (lapsed, expired or been terminated), with allegations of 'mungkir terma' (breach of terms), 'frod' (fraud) and 'gantirugi' (damages) — and ultimately found that the agreement had validly lapsed, that there had been no breach, that fraud was not proven and that damages were not established, so that the 'tuntutan Plaintif ditolak' (the plaintiff's claim was dismissed). A second High Court matter, appearing for the plaintiff, turned on combined applications under Order 18 and Order 14 of the Rules of Court 2012, where a party operating without a valid licence found its claim met by the maxim ex turpi causa non oritur actio; the applications were allowed, the claim struck out and the counterclaim allowed. The third matter, in the Court of Appeal and appearing for the appellant, concerned the jurisdiction of the Syariah High Court and the distinction between a renunciation case and an ab initio case, engaging the definition of a Muslim under the Administration of the Religion of Islam (State of Selangor) Enactment 2003 and related provisions of the Islamic Family Law Enactment. The three matters share a concern with when a claim should never reach trial at all: a joint-venture claim dismissed after full argument because its factual premises failed, a claim struck out summarily under Orders 18 and 14 because illegality made it unsustainable, and an appeal about whether a dispute belonged before the civil courts or the Syariah High Court in the first place. The profile is one of commercial contract litigation combined with significant questions at the civil-Syariah interface.