Firoz Hussein bin Ahmad Jamaluddin

On the court record

Firoz Hussein bin Ahmad Jamaluddin appears in the corpus in high-profile civil litigation touching the liability and immunity of public officers and in substantial commercial disputes, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). Two Court of Appeal matters arise from the same broad controversy over the conduct of a former Attorney General. In one, appearing for the respondent, the issue was an allegation of a real danger of bias on the part of the trial court and a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19(1) of the Rules of Court 2012. In the other, appearing for the appellant, the appeal raised searching questions about the reach of civil liability against an Attorney General: whether the office is immune from civil action where prosecutorial discretion is said to have been abused, whether a misfeasance action was premature, whether a tort of malicious process exists, whether an Attorney General can be sued in negligence for statements made after retirement, and whether a breach of Article 8 of the Federal Constitution was disclosed where other accused persons were said to have received favourable treatment. A third matter, in the High Court and appearing for the plaintiff, was a commercial dispute resolved after a full trial; the court's judgment, recorded in Malay, dismissed the plaintiff's claim against the second defendant with costs, allowed that defendant's counterclaim, and declared that a Mareva injunction obtained against it had been wrongly granted and was 'berniat mala fide' (made in bad faith). The two public-officer appeals are notable for pressing the outer limits of civil accountability for decisions that are ordinarily treated as within an unreviewable discretion, while the commercial trial shows the same counsel securing not merely a dismissal of the claim but affirmative relief on a counterclaim and a finding that an interim freezing order had been improperly obtained. Across the appearances the practice is that of senior counsel engaged with constitutional and tort questions about the accountability of public officers and with the conduct of complex commercial trials.