Marina Tiwol

On the court record

Marina Tiwol appears in the corpus in commercial and contract litigation and in statutory recovery, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). One Court of Appeal matter, appearing for the appellant, concerned the construction of contracts and the principles to be applied where the terms are ambiguous or contradictory: the court affirmed that evidence of the surrounding circumstances before a contract is signed may be used to construe its terms, but that evidence of what occurred after signing cannot be used for that purpose — a settled but frequently contested boundary in the interpretation of written agreements. A second matter, in the High Court and appearing for the appellant, was a civil-procedure dispute about case management, and specifically whether the court could allow the respondent's claim because of the appellant's failure to comply with directions, including the filing of pre-trial documents by a deadline, engaging Order 34 rule 2(3) and (4) of the Rules of Court 2012 and the consequences of non-compliance within the modern managed-litigation framework. A third matter, in the High Court and appearing for the plaintiff, was a statutory recovery claim by an electricity utility arising from the inspection of a meter installation at the defendant's premises and an alleged unlawful bypass of the metering system; the case engaged section 38(4) of the Electricity Supply Act 1990 and the requirement that the utility's written statement, which is intended to create a prima facie evidential foundation for recovery, be served before the suit is commenced, together with the drawing of an adverse inference under section 114(g) of the Evidence Act 1950 where the defendant did not appear to give evidence. Across the appearances the practice combines the interpretation of commercial contracts and the discipline of case management with the statutory machinery by which a utility recovers for the theft of electricity.