Vijayan Venugopal

On the court record

The reported matters concentrate on employment and industrial-relations work, including the judicial review of Industrial Court awards, grounded in High Court and Court of Appeal judgments.

Vijayan Venugopal's reported matters are concentrated in employment and industrial-relations litigation, argued largely for the employer or responding side in the High Court and the Court of Appeal. A recurring theme is the judicial review of Industrial Court awards. In one matter a trade union sought to challenge an Industrial Court award by judicial review, and the Court, declining to disturb the Industrial Court's findings of fact in formulating an equitable and reasonable collective agreement, found no merit in the application and dismissed it with costs of RM20,000. In a further judicial review an employee sought to quash an Industrial Court decision, and, appearing for the respondent employer, the Court held that no procedural non-compliance, illegality or irrationality justified allowing the application, which it dismissed with costs.

The profile also includes an appeal against an Industrial Court decision that had dismissed a claimant's case, where he appeared for the respondent, the matter turning on whether the Industrial Court had been correct in its treatment of the dispute.

Civil procedure features in a Court of Appeal matter arising from a striking-out application under Order 18 rule 19(1)(a) of the Rules of Court 2012, where he appeared for the respondent and the Court gave directions for the matter to return for case management. A thread across these decisions is the defence of employers and Industrial Court awards against challenge, and the supervisory limits the courts observe when reviewing a specialist tribunal, so that an award will not be disturbed absent a genuine error of law, procedural failure or irrationality. The reported work thus sits squarely in the employment and industrial-relations field, argued in the High Court and before the Court of Appeal of Malaysia, and grounded in the judgments rather than any ranking. The reported work is characteristically defensive of decisions already made, upholding collective agreements formulated by the Industrial Court and resisting attempts to reopen them through review or appeal.