PERUSAHAAN OTOMOBIL NASIONAL Sdn Bhd

On the court record

The national car manufacturer litigating a tenancy reinstatement dispute and two Fortuna injunction applications testing whether a debt was genuinely disputed under the Companies Act 2016.

Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Sdn Bhd, the national automobile manufacturer known as Proton, appears in the corpus in a tenancy dispute and in two applications to restrain winding-up proceedings.

The tenancy matter began as a landlord-and-tenant dispute in which a trial court had allowed a tenant's claim for the return of a security deposit at the expiry of the tenancy and dismissed the landlord's counterclaim for reinstatement works. On appeal the decision was reversed: the High Court found that the tenant had fulfilled its contractual obligation to reinstate the demised premises, and that the landlord was entitled to damages for reinstatement costs and loss of rental income. The court's reasoning turned on strict adherence to the tenancy agreement, the burden of proof for damages in a breach-of-contract claim, and entitlement to compensation for loss of use during necessary repairs.

The two remaining matters concerned applications for a Fortuna injunction, the equitable relief that restrains the presentation of a winding-up petition where the petition would be an abuse of process. In the first, the company sought to injunct a creditor from presenting a petition, arguing that a petition would inevitably cause irreparable harm; the court found no bona fide dispute on substantial grounds, characterising the position as a refusal to pay rather than a genuine dispute, and held that the company had not shown the intended petition had no real chance of success, so the application was dismissed. The second application, framed in Bahasa Malaysia around a hutang yang dipertikaikan (disputed debt) and the principles governing a Fortuna Injunction under sections 465 and 466 of the Companies Act 2016, again tested whether the debt was bona fide disputed.

The matters show a manufacturer litigating contractual reinstatement liability and the boundary between a genuine debt dispute and a winding-up threat. Outcomes are stated as recorded.