Sivanandini Sreegantham

On the court record

Sivanandini Sreegantham appears in the corpus as counsel across employment-related judicial review and general commercial litigation, at every tier from the High Court to the Federal Court. At the apex level she was engaged as respondent's counsel in the Federal Court proceedings involving Acexide Technology Sdn Bhd and the Industrial Court, which raised the adequacy of an Order 53 statement in a judicial review, the grounds of procedural impropriety, irrationality, illegality and proportionality, and a substantive question of employment law — whether a company director can at the same time be an employee, and how the definition of a "workman" under the Industrial Relations Act 1967 applies to a directorship.

Her reported civil work shows a taste for the machinery of interlocutory relief. In a High Court matter involving the Armanee Condominium joint management body and Burgess Rawson Management Sdn Bhd, the court drew out the difference between an application for summary judgment under Order 14 and a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19, holding that the two engage distinct principles, tests and burdens of proof. In a dispute between Lebas Technologies Sdn Bhd and Malaysian Bio-XCell Sdn Bhd (in liquidation) she was engaged where a performance bond sum was said to be trust property held by a constructive trustee, invoking section 41 of the Specific Relief Act 1950. She also appeared on both sides of a Court of Appeal contract dispute over the termination of a joint venture agreement, turning on whether a party had ostensible authority to sign a supplementary agreement transmitted by WhatsApp, and in a High Court claim in unlawful-means conspiracy that engaged the particularisation of conspiracy, breach of fiduciary duty, constructive trust and the rule in Henderson v Henderson. The reported matters present her as a litigator equally at home in employment judicial review and in company and contract disputes.