Agency

In this practice area

Agency collects the judgments concerned with the relationship between a principal and an agent — the authority to bind the principal, the duties owed, and the remuneration payable — under the Contracts Act 1950 and the general law. Estate agency and property transactions feature prominently, alongside the commercial agency relationships that arise in trade.

Authority is a central subject. Judgments examine actual authority, both express and implied, and apparent or ostensible authority, together with the indoor-management rule associated with Turquand's case by which a third party may assume the regularity of a company's internal dealings. The scope of an agent's authority to negotiate — for example, to vary the terms of a rental on behalf of a principal — is considered under sections 140 and 141 of the Contracts Act 1950.

Estate agency and remuneration form a distinct strand. The collection includes the estate-agency agreement and the entitlement of a registered estate agent to a fee under the Valuers, Appraisers, Estate Agents and Property Managers Act 1981, and the circumstances in which the fee is earned on the sale or purchase of property negotiated through the agent. Agency reasoning also appears alongside company law, where the authority of a director to bind the company is in issue, and alongside evidence, where the proof of a document or a signature bears on the agent's dealings.

The cases sit mainly in the High Court, with a further group in the Court of Appeal. As a whole the area shows how the Malaysian courts fix the boundaries of an agent's authority and the obligations that flow from it — deciding when a principal is bound by the acts of the agent, and when an agent has earned the remuneration claimed — while drawing on the wider commercial and property context in which agency relationships operate.