Mohd Adzrul bin Adzlan

On the court record

Mohd Adzrul bin Adzlan appears in the corpus in energy-sector commercial litigation and in native customary rights appeals, argued in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi) and the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan). One High Court matter, appearing for the defendant, arose from the contest over natural gas supply in Sarawak: an interpleader and mandatory injunction application by a gas supplier caught between competing payment claims from Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas) and Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (Petros), against the backdrop of a federal-state jurisdictional dispute under the Petroleum Development Act 1974 and the Distribution of Gas Ordinance 2016; the injunction was granted to preserve the status quo and to ensure the continued supply of gas with protected payments pending resolution of the underlying jurisdictional conflict. Two further matters, appearing for the respondent in one and the appellant in the other, were part of a set of related Court of Appeal appeals concerning native customary rights, or NCR, over land in Sarawak, brought against the Superintendent of Land & Survey, Limbang Division, the State Government of Sarawak, and the Land Custody and Development Authority. Those appeals raised the recurring NCR questions: whether the native customary right claimed had been proven, whether the map tendered to delineate the claimed area should be given evidential weight, whether the High Court had given inadequate reasons warranting appellate interference, and whether a prior alienation of the land by the State extinguished the right and barred rectification of the title. Both areas share, at their root, a contest over authority and entitlement to land and the resources beneath it — in the gas dispute between the federal and state governments, and in the native customary rights appeals between an indigenous community and the state land authorities — so that in each the court is asked to decide whose claim the law will ultimately recognise. Across the appearances the practice combines high-value energy and regulatory litigation, where the federal and state claims to authority over natural resources collide, with the distinctive East Malaysian land law that governs the recognition and extinguishment of customary rights.