Tan Jia Shen

On the court record

Engages the appeal route under section 418 of the National Land Code and the judicial-review leave stage for challenging land-administration decisions, and the setting aside of CIPAA adjudication decisions.

Tan Jia Shen's appearances in this corpus, all in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), engage land administration, judicial review and construction adjudication, several of them arising from linked proceedings involving a state land authority. As counsel for the plaintiff he acted in a "rayuan" (appeal) against a decision of the State Authority alienating land under section 418 of the National Land Code, the court recording that the appeal was dismissed with costs. Section 418 provides a route of appeal to the court from decisions of the State Authority and land administrators, and it is one of the principal means by which land-administration decisions are challenged.

In a connected matter he acted as counsel for the applicant in "semakan kehakiman" (judicial review) proceedings, where the court dealt with an application for leave to apply for judicial review, an objection that the time for seeking leave had lapsed, and an application to amend the leave application. The court allowed the leave application and the amendment while dismissing the time-bar objection. Those interlocutory rulings are characteristic of the leave stage of judicial review, where questions of time and the scope of the challenge are resolved before the substantive hearing.

He also appeared as counsel for the plaintiff in a construction dispute concerning the setting aside of an adjudication decision made under the Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication Act 2012 (CIPAA). The issue was whether the adjudicator's failure to disclose his involvement in an ongoing civil suit constituted a jurisdictional defect and gave rise to a reasonable suspicion of bias — the same narrow band of statutory grounds on which a CIPAA decision may be impugned. Across these matters, Tan Jia Shen's practice engages the appeal and judicial-review routes for challenging land-administration and public decisions, and the setting aside of adjudication decisions under CIPAA.