Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. Collected By JAMES BURNETT, LORD MONBODDO.

Inter Eosdem

Date: 5 January 1754

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A freeholder in this county had his lands valued in a cess-book of the county, as old as the year 1691, at the rate of L.473, and had paid cess, he and his predecessors, accordingly, from the year 1691 down to this day. It was objected that the book 1691 was of no authority, not being anyways authenticated, and by a prior book in the year 1687, it appeared that these lands were jointly valued in cumulo with other lands, nor was there any evidence of their ever being legally divided; and as to the use of paying cess for so long a time, it was decided in a case last summer, from the county of Caithness, that the use of paying cess for forty-five years did not ascertain a man's valuation.

The Lords nevertheless repelled the objection unanimously. Those of them that were for the Caithness decision made this distinction betwixt the two cases, —that in the Caithness case the freeholder, not content with his use of payment of cess, had attempted a division of the valuation before the commissioners of supply, thereby giving up his ancient use of payment, to which the Lords could not afterwards let him have recourse, upon relevant objections being made to the new division.