Captain David Collins, v. The Judge of the High Court of Admiralty
Date: 20 February 1781 Case No. No 173.
There having been only three procurators in the High Court of Admiralty; in a case in which four parties were concerned, the Judge-Admiral refused to admit an interim procurator; but the Admiral's judgment having been advocated, the Court remitted with instructions to admit the procurator suggested.
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A competition with respect to a Dutch prize-vessel, which had arisen between Captain Collins of his Majesty's navy and three other parties, came before the High Court of Admiralty. But one of the three ordinary procurators belonging to that court being retained by each of the last mentioned parties, no one remained to conduct the suit in behalf of Collins. He, therefore, presented a petition to the Judge, praying that William Sprott, solicitor before the inferior courts of Edinburgh, might be permitted to act on this occasion as his procurator. His petition, however, being refused, he then applied to the Court of Session by bill of advocation; in opposition to which the Judge-Admiral,
Pleaded; According to immemorial consuetude, the only persons entitled to practise in the Admiralty Court, beside the limited number of three ordinary procurators, are the Faculty of Advocates; nor can any litigant ever want ample assisstance from so numerous and so learned a body.
Answered by Collins, It is a jest to pretend that the detail of proceedings in that Court can possibly be conducted, by any other persons but those who have had an opportunity of being habituated to every minute circumstance of its intricate forms of process; a thing which the province of an advocate does not even admit.
The Lords did not enter into the questions with regard to the foundation of the immemorial custom pleaded by the Judge-Admiral, nor to the qualifications requisite in a practitioner before his Court. They considered this case as affording an example of a wrong, to which no ordinary remedy could be applied, but for which their supreme jurisdiction authorised them to provide an extraordinary one; in the same manner as in all those more important instances, where any accidental stop having been put to the usual course of administration, in distributing justice, or in regulating police, it is their privilege, by temporary appointments, to supply the deficiency.
Accordingly, the Lords 'remitted the cause to the Judge-Admiral, with an instruction to admit Mr Sprott, without delay, to act in the cause as procurator for Captain Collins.'
