K. Shanti Mogan

On the court record

The reported matters document conflict-of-interest, confidential-information and commercial-tenancy work, grounded in High Court and Court of Appeal judgments rather than any ranking.

K. Shanti Mogan's reported matters, argued with the team at Messrs Shearn Delamore & Co, cover civil procedure, employment-related confidentiality disputes and commercial tenancy litigation across the High Court and the Court of Appeal. A procedural decision of note is a High Court application at Shah Alam to disqualify a plaintiff's solicitors on the ground of conflict of interest, arising from the firm's prior representation of the defendant in matters connected to the same development project. In that matter the Court allowed the disqualification application, barring the firm from continuing to act for the plaintiff in the action, and ordered costs of RM3,000.

A substantial commercial strand concerns the protection of confidential information. In related Court of Appeal appeals involving a parking-solutions business, where a company alleged that former employees had disclosed its confidential information to a competitor incorporated abroad and used it to secure projects in several countries, she appeared for a respondent. The Court of Appeal upheld the findings made at first instance in favour of the company on the breach-of-fiduciary-duty and misuse-of-confidential-information issues.

Commercial tenancy litigation rounds out the profile. In a High Court suit at Kuala Lumpur between an airport operator and a lounge operator, the disputed procedural question was whether the matter should continue by way of originating summons or be converted into a writ action, given a largely undisputed factual matrix built around a tenancy agreement and transaction records. Acting for the plaintiff, the Court held the originating summons was the suitable mode and dismissed the enclosure seeking conversion, while permitting cross-examination of the deponents. A common feature of these matters is that the disputed questions were as much about the framework of litigation as its merits, whether a firm should be permitted to act, how confidential information gathered in employment may be used, and which procedural mode fits an undisputed factual record. Taken together the reported work reaches solicitor-disqualification and conflict questions, fiduciary and confidential-information disputes, and commercial-tenancy procedure, argued at first instance in the High Court at Shah Alam and Kuala Lumpur and on appeal before the Court of Appeal.