Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR JOHN LAUDER OF FOUNTAINHALL.
William Bell v. The Magistrates of Linlithgow
Date: 31 January 1693
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William Bell, town-clerk of Lithgow, against the Magistrates and Towncouncil thereof. The hail Lords were clear to annul the act of deprivation as informal, and a summary proceeding without probation. But some thought the malversation charged on him relevant to infer deposition, if it were true. Others, that it might oblige him to repair the Town's damage, by his being the occasion of heightening their excise; but that every fault was not like Draco's law, to infer loss of an office provided during life. Some were for turning the decreet into a libel, and hearing the Town on this, or any additional articles of malversation against him. But the generality found the deprivation illegal, and reponed him again to his place; and would not so much as sustain them as a libel, nor to add their other grounds, but remitted them to pursue him via ordinaria, if they had a mind, by way of process. The next question will be, if he can claim the intermediate profits and emoluments of the place since his deprivation, for summary removing of servants or clerks without a process. See 14th February, 1665, Sir William Thomson against the Town of Edinburgh, if it may be done de plano sine strepitu et figura judicii, per modum simplicis quœrelœ.
