Kalashini Sandrasegaran

On the court record

Kalashini Sandrasegaran appears in the corpus in arbitration-related litigation, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan), and concerned throughout with the recognition, enforcement and setting aside of arbitral awards under the Arbitration Act 2005. Two related Court of Appeal appeals, appearing for the respondent, arose from a dispute between petroleum-industry parties over the supply of cost-plus valves, in which one party was said to be in breach of the express and implied terms of the contract and to have supplied valves that did not correspond with their description and were not of merchantable quality, causing substantial loss. Beyond the merits, the appeals raised a significant challenge to the award on natural-justice grounds — whether the arbitral tribunal had breached the rules of natural justice by deciding the matter on an issue that had not been raised or addressed by the parties — a recognised basis on which the courts will intervene in an otherwise final award. A third matter, in the High Court and appearing for the applicant, was an application to set aside an arbitration award under several limbs of section 37 of the Arbitration Act 2005, in a claim for compensation for losses said to flow from a breach of a duty to nominate buyers to sign sale-and-purchase agreements; the court set aside part of the award, holding that the arbitrator had awarded interest at five per cent per annum without giving the parties notice, without hearing them, and without fairly considering the reasonableness of the rate. What connects the appeals is the tension at the centre of arbitration law between the finality of an award and the court's residual supervisory role: an award will ordinarily be recognised and enforced, yet it remains vulnerable where the tribunal has stepped outside the case the parties put to it or has fixed a remedy without giving them a fair opportunity to be heard. Across the appearances the practice is that of a specialist in arbitration, engaged with both the enforcement of awards and the narrow but important grounds — natural justice and the tribunal's own procedure — on which an award may be set aside.