Sanjay Mohanasundram

On the court record

Engages the CIPAA adjudication regime and challenges for bias and jurisdiction, the enforcement of arbitral awards, and the resolution of substantial construction-contract disputes.

Sanjay Mohanasundram's appearances in this corpus are concentrated in construction and arbitration disputes. As counsel for the plaintiff in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), he acted in an application to set aside an adjudication decision made under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA). The central question was whether the adjudicator's failure to disclose his involvement in an ongoing civil suit constituted a jurisdictional defect under section 15(d) of CIPAA, and whether the non-disclosure or a refusal to recuse gave rise to a reasonable suspicion of bias under the relevant provisions of section 15. Adjudication under CIPAA is a fast, interim payment mechanism, and challenges to an adjudicator's decision are confined to narrow statutory grounds — breach of natural justice, denial of independence or impartiality, and excess of jurisdiction — so the disclosure and recusal question went to the heart of the adjudicator's authority.

In the Court of Appeal (Mahkamah Rayuan) he acted as counsel for an appellant in an arbitration matter, where the question was whether an award obtained pursuant to a court-ordered reference to arbitration could be enforced under the Arbitration Act, and whether such a reference differs from a consensual submission to arbitration. A connected point was whether enforcement should instead have proceeded under section 24A of the Courts of Judicature Act 1964. The dispute also raised a contract question — whether a sub-contract between the parties was an "Ali Baba" arrangement, a colloquial description of a sub-contract that offends licensing or public-policy requirements.

He also appeared for a plaintiff in a substantial construction claim involving disputed entitlements — the renewal of a performance bond, the provision of a line of credit, the alleged wrongful suspension of works, the lawfulness of a determination of employment, and claims for work done and variations. Across these matters, Sanjay Mohanasundram's practice engages the CIPAA adjudication regime, the enforcement of arbitral awards, and the resolution of substantial construction-contract disputes.