Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. reported by Alexander Tait, Clerk Of Session, one of the reporters for the faculty.
Subject_2 REPARATION

John Sinclair of Freswick
v.
The Justices of Caithness

1767.Summer.

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Certain Justices of the Peace, in the county of Caithness, in the course of a proceeding against one M'Beath, who was servant to Mr Sinclair of Freswick, Sheriff of Caithness, and one Thomson, took an opportunity of throwing out injurious allegations against the Sheriff, who was no party to the process; and particularly, in their sentence, they went out of the cause before them, and thought proper to introduce a history of the Sheriff's character in very severe terms, convicting him of several alleged malversations in the duty of his office qua Sheriff, and in the partial administration of justice; and this sentence they ordered to be placarded at the several churches throughout the county.

The Sheriff having brought an action of damages, the defence chiefly insisted on for the Justices was the veritas convicii, as they not only offered a special condescendence of his alleged malversations but undertook to prove them. But the Lord Alemore, Ordinary, having limited the proof concerning the conduct and behaviour of Mr Sinclair to those facts which regarded the present cause, the Lords adhered, and though the Justices appealed, yet they withdrew their appeal before hearing.