Lim Pang Kiat

On the court record

A civil and commercial litigation practice with a pronounced civil-procedure and corporate-liability component.

Lim Pang Kiat practises in civil and commercial litigation, appearing in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), with the reported decisions recording appearances as defendant and plaintiff. The caseload has a strong civil-procedure character. The reported matters engage the withdrawal of an amended defence and counterclaim, discovery, and the strict-necessity test that governs certain procedural applications, together with the mandatory and prohibitory injunction and the principles that govern each.

A distinctive strand concerns the summary termination of proceedings and corporate wrongdoing: the reported matters engage applications to strike out a pleading under Order 18 rule 19 of the Rules of Court 2012 as disclosing no reasonable cause of action or as an abuse of process, and the fraudulent-trading provision in "section 540" of the Companies Act 2016, which imposes liability where a company's business is carried on with intent to defraud creditors. Appearing on both sides of the record, the practice is instructed in commercial disputes and the interlocutory contests that shape them.

The work turns on the principles of civil procedure and on the corporate liability provisions. In the injunction matters the argument concerns whether the threshold for mandatory or prohibitory relief is met; in the discovery and strict-necessity matters whether a party is entitled to the relief sought; in the strike-out matters whether the pleading is plainly unsustainable; and in the fraudulent-trading matters whether the company's business was carried on with intent to defraud. The reported reasons frequently turn on the procedural machinery of the litigation.

The overall profile is a civil and commercial litigation practice with a pronounced civil-procedure and corporate-liability component, conducted principally at first instance in the High Court. The matters turn on the Rules of Court, the principles governing injunctions and strike-outs, and the Companies Act fraudulent-trading provision, rather than on any criminal or public-law dimension, marking a practice built around commercial disputes and the procedure that governs them.