The defendant has appealed to the Supreme Court against a Mareva injunction which I granted. I now give my grounds of decision.

Both parties were contractors, involved in this case in the construction of that section of the toll expressway from Ipoh to Sungei Perak referred by the parties herein as section 1.1 (hereinafter called the said work).

A statutory body of the Malaysian government, i.e. Malaysian Highway Authority or Lembaga Lebohraya Malaysia, gave a contract to a foreign company, i.e. Halla Construction Co. Ltd. of Korea in respect of the said expressway. Halla Construction Co. Ltd. in turn sub-contracted the said work to the defendant which in turn sub-contracted the said work to the plaintiff which was euphemistically referred to in the contract between the parties hereto as the "manager". It was left to the plaintiff alone to carry out the entire and actual work at the entire expense and resources of the plaintiff.

The consideration for the defendant sub-contracting the said work to the plaintiff, it was not disputed, was 2% of all payment received for the value of work carried out by the plaintiff, with the plaintiff taking 98% of the same. It was not in dispute also that payment for work done was by means of progress payments numbered consecutively.

Things appeared to go well for some time, until 3 July 1984, when on that day, the defendant wrote to plaintiff and terminated the contract between them dated 2 November 1982. According to the affidavit filed on behalf of the defendant, the defendant had apparently received some complaint from the head-contractor, i.e. Halla Construction Co. Ltd., that the said work had not been carried out with diligence, and that quality of the said work was low. The plaintiff replied that the termination was wrongful and chose to keep the contract alive and has claimed specific performance of the contract and/or damages for breach. On 4 July 1984, true to what it said in the notice dated 3 July 1984, the defendant took over the entire site, took possession of all equipment of the plaintiff and apparently engaged the same workers of the plaintiff or a great number of them. The plaintiff claimed, in connection with such workers, that it was the result of the defendant wrongfully inducing breach of contract of employment between the plaintiff and its former workers.

It would be pertinent to refer to the notice of termination of the contract. The defendant expressed in such notice great disappointment in not receiving certain details or reply as requested by its earlier letter dated 22 June 1984. It then concluded that the plaintiff was not capable of proceeding with the said work regularly and diligently. The defendant, in the said notice, said further that in order to maintain its reputation as a contractor, it was now forced to terminate the employment of the plaintiff as "the manager".

The words "diligently" and "regularly" were echoed back by clause 12(a)(ii) which I will set out below:

"12(a)(ii). If he fails to proceed regularly and diligently with the said works; then, if such default shall continue for ten days after a notice by registered post or recorded delivery specifying the default had been given to him by Bina, Bina may without prejudice to any other rights or remedies thereupon by notice by registered post or recorded delivery determine the employment of the manager under this agreement; provided that notice in pursuance of this clause shall not be given unreasonably or vexatiously and shall be void if Bina is at the time of the notice in breach of this agreement;"

It will be apparent that the prerequisite of the notice in question or the said notice of termination would be that such notice would have to be preceded by another earlier notice sent previously by registered post or, by another method of delivery which they called 'recorded delivery", specifying the default and that such default should have already continued (uncorrected) for ten days bef