Naziman Bin Mahmud

On the court record

Naziman Bin Mahmud appears in the corpus in land and defamation litigation in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), much of it decided in Malay. One matter, appearing for the applicant, was an application to terminate co-ownership of land under 'Seksyen 145 Kanun Tanah Negara' (section 145 of the National Land Code), brought by a registered landowner who proposed a partition plan; a co-owner objected and put forward an alternative plan, and the court, satisfied of its jurisdiction under section 136 of the Code, considered which partition was the more just, proper and comprehensive, holding that the absence of expert valuation evidence was not fatal to the application. A second matter, appearing for the defendant, was a defamation claim in which the court found that the plaintiffs had failed to call any representative of the relevant authority as a witness to prove that the second plaintiff's reputation had been harmed or that the first plaintiff had suffered distress; concluding that the plaintiffs had sought to withhold and conceal a material fact that would not have assisted their case, the court dismissed the claim in its entirety. A third matter, appearing for the plaintiff, was a land dispute engaging the burden of proof under sections 101 and 102 of the Evidence Act 1950 — the principle that a plaintiff must prove its case on the balance of probabilities and that the burden never shifts — together with the application of the Torrens system, the validity of the cancellation of a trust, the effect of a private caveat under section 322(4) of the National Land Code, a registered owner's right to vacant possession, and the treatment of a 'hibah kasih sayang' (a gift of affection). Across the appearances the practice is concentrated on the National Land Code — co-ownership, caveats and registered title — and on the evidential burden in civil and defamation claims.