Hoo Kit Yee

On the court record

Hoo Kit Yee appears in the corpus in commercial litigation touching civil procedure, arbitration-related injunctions and the abuse of insolvency remedies, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). One High Court matter, appearing for the applicant, was an application for discovery of documents under Order 24 of the Rules of Court 2012, which the court examined for inordinate delay in filing and against the settled tests of whether the documents sought were relevant and necessary. A second matter, in the High Court and appearing for the plaintiff, concerned interim measures in aid of arbitration: an application for injunctive relief in respect of contemplated arbitration proceedings, engaging sections 11 and 19J of the Arbitration Act 2005 and the applicable test — whether, and to what extent, an applicant must show a serious issue to be tried, and whether the defendant's arguments fell within the purview of the arbitration rather than the court. A third matter, in the Court of Appeal and appearing for the respondent, concerned the alleged misuse of a company's winding-up process and of the statutory remedies under section 351 of the Companies Act 2016 — the use, or abuse, of the insolvency jurisdiction as a tactical weapon in a wider commercial dispute. Across the appearances the practice combines the interlocutory machinery of litigation — discovery, and injunctions to hold the position pending an arbitral determination — with the boundary between legitimate recourse to the winding-up process and its improper deployment. The through-line is the management of a dispute before and around the final hearing: securing documents, preserving rights while a tribunal is seised of the merits, and resisting the strategic use of insolvency procedure, each of which calls for a close reading of the governing rules and statutes rather than a contest at trial.