Norazali bin Nordin

On the court record

The reported matters span contract, land-caveat and aviation-disaster estate work, grounded in High Court and Court of Appeal judgments.

Norazali bin Nordin's reported matters, argued through Messrs Raimy Fuaad Aqis, span contract and land disputes and a significant aviation-disaster estate matter, across the High Court and the Court of Appeal. A contract decision arose from a project to lease two plots of land at Kuala Kangsar, where the plaintiff sought the return of deposits of RM500,000 and RM200,000; appearing for a respondent, the Court found that the plaintiff had itself failed to take the steps required and, on appeal from the Sessions Court, dismissed the plaintiff's appeal with costs of RM6,000.

Land features in a High Court matter on the removal of a private caveat, where the questions were whether a caveatable interest had been disclosed, the effect of a special condition in a sale-and-purchase agreement and a consent judgment said to supersede earlier contractual rights, and whether a contingent contractual expectancy was sufficient to sustain a caveat under section 323 of the National Land Code; he appeared for a defendant.

The most striking matter is a pair of related Court of Appeal appeals arising from the loss of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which engaged a Faraid order on the distribution of a Muslim estate, a stakeholder and release agreement, the Montreal Convention 1999, and sections 7(2) and 7(5) of the Civil Law Act 1956 on claims by the legal heirs and next-of-kin of the deceased. He appeared on both sides of these related appeals, in litigation that combined international air-carriage liability with the domestic law of dependency and inheritance. A thread across these decisions is the resolution of entitlement, whether to a returned deposit, to a caveatable interest in land, or to the compensation and estate arising from a fatal air disaster, argued in the High Court and before the Court of Appeal of Malaysia. The reported work is notable for pairing everyday contract and land disputes with an internationally framed claim, showing a practice that moves between domestic deposit and caveat questions and the treaty-based liability of an air carrier.