Dato' Malik Imtiaz Sarwar

On the court record

Senior appellate practice in constitutional law, judicial review and company disputes in the Court of Appeal and Federal Court.

Dato' Malik Imtiaz Sarwar appears principally in the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) and the Federal Court (Mahkamah Persekutuan), and the reported decisions describe a public-law and commercial practice built around constitutional and administrative questions. Judicial review ("semakan kehakiman") is a recurring vehicle, and several matters engage the interpretation of the Federal Constitution directly — including the interplay of Article 4(1) and Article 4(2) on the striking down of unconstitutional laws.

The work is not confined to public law. The catchwords record company disputes, including minority-oppression proceedings under the shareholder-remedy provisions of the Companies Act, together with civil-procedure questions such as a stay of execution of a money judgment, bankruptcy matters, and family-law issues. Across these he appears on both sides of the record — as appellant and as respondent — reflecting a practice instructed at the appellate level in matters that turn on points of law rather than on primary fact-finding.

A distinctive thread is the appellate court's own methodology: the reported decisions include argument on whether the "broad grounds" delivered by a court constitute its full grounds of judgment, a question about the adequacy of judicial reasoning that bears on the fairness of an appeal. The profile that emerges is that of senior counsel handling constitutional interpretation, judicial review and high-value company and civil disputes in the two highest courts, where the argument is about the limits of state and corporate power and the proper reach of the Constitution. The reported matters also include a stay of execution of a money judgment, together with bankruptcy and family questions, so the constitutional and administrative work sits alongside high-value private litigation, the common thread being appellate argument on questions of law before the Court of Appeal and the Federal Court. It is a practice defined less by any single field than by the appellate forum and the constitutional, administrative and commercial questions of law that reach the highest courts.