Thevini Nayagam

On the court record

Engages the enforceability of leases and the effect of non-registration, negligence and contributory negligence in claims for damage to buried infrastructure, and the validity of powers of attorney and loan transactions.

Thevini Nayagam's appearances in this corpus, all in the High Court (Mahkamah Tinggi), engage contract, negligence and civil procedure. As counsel for a defendant she acted in a dispute over a lease, where the question was when the lease commenced and whether an enforceable leasehold interest had been created. A clause stipulated that the lease term was to begin upon registration, but the lease was never registered; the court had to decide whether an enforceable leasehold interest arose in those circumstances and whether an obligation to pay rent had accrued. A further point of construction concerned a clause requiring payment "sebaik baik Perjanjian ditandatangani" (as soon as the agreement was signed), and whether that obligation was immediate upon execution or contingent upon registration.

As counsel for the plaintiff she acted in a negligence claim concerning damage to underground telecommunications cables and infrastructure. The questions were whether the defendant had negligently caused the damage, whether it had admitted liability, and whether the plaintiff had itself been negligent in failing to label the location of the cables — a contributory-negligence argument that frequently arises in claims for damage to buried utility infrastructure during excavation works.

She also acted as counsel for a defendant in a matter involving the validity of a power of attorney and a loan agreement, engaging limitation, an allegation that the transaction was in truth a money-lending transaction, and claims of fraud and unlawful or lawful conspiracy to injure, with the application ultimately allowed. Across these matters, Thevini Nayagam's practice engages the formation and enforceability of leases and the effect of non-registration, negligence and contributory negligence in claims for damage to infrastructure, and the validity of powers of attorney and loan transactions challenged as unlawful money-lending. A common thread running through the reported work is the careful reading of contractual language against the surrounding facts — when an obligation crystallises, on whom a duty of care falls, and whether a transaction bearing the outward form of one arrangement is in substance another — with the court in each case resolving the dispute by close attention to what the parties actually agreed and did.