Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER, LORD FOUNTAINHALL.
Sir Alexander Cunyghame of Camskeith v. The Town of Hadintoun
Date: 2 July 1670
Click here to view a pdf copy of this documet : PDF Copy
This was a charge for delivery to him of a cup, or of L.15 Sterling as the price thereof, which the said town was decerned by the commissaries to make payment of to him as he who had won the same at their horse race. The reason of suspension was, that this being about a horse race it was noway a consistorial matter, and so the commissaries were not judges competent to the same; but esto they had been judges, they committed manifest iniquity, in so far as they repelled an unanswerable defence in law, viz. that Camskeith could never be heard to seek the cup, because they offered them to prove that, being weighed at the louping on and at the leaping off, he was lighter when he leapt off than when he began, and so can never plead the cup; and this, though the same was proven by the judges sworn and appointed for weighing them.
Answered,—This is jus tertii to the town, and noways competent to them but only to the second rider, who compears not; item, denies there were any such persons sworn to weigh them; as also to prove the custom in that place is that they do not weigh them at their leaping off, which special custom must derogate to the general custom of weighing them elsewhere, quia specialia derogant generalibus.
