Scottish Court of Session Decisions

This is an action of count and reckoning by the representatives of the late Professor Donaldson, who raised it as in right of his wife, Dorothy Findlay or Donaldson, against Findlay, Bannatyne, & Co., a company formed for the purpose of paying the debts of the insolvent firm of Cunningham, Findlay, & Co., of Glasgow, of which company Robert Findlay, the father of Mrs Donaldson, was a partner. The case has been for many years before the Court, and on 3d March 1860, the Court of Session pronounced an interlocutor decerning in favour of the pursuers against Findlay, Bannatyne, & Company, and Robert Findlay, as sole surviving partner of that company, and Martin Tucker Smith, as the surviving disponee and assignee in trust, for behoof of the creditors of the said company, for the sum of £4033, 7s. 3d., with interest thereon since 26th February 1827, at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum; but under this qualification, that interest on the sum of £1383, 4s. from 9th July 1831, the date of an interim decree pronounced for said sum, to 10th November 1849, shall be restricted to the rate payable during that time if that be less than 5 per cent., and under deduction of the said sum of £1383, 4s., said sum to be applied towards extinction of the said sum of £4033, 7s. 3d. at the date of payment thereof. This interlocutor was appealed to the House of Lords, and a remit was made to this Court with certain directions to adjust all the claims of the parties. Thereafter, in pursuance of a remit from the Court of Session, a report was prepared by Mr Auldjo Jamieson, accountant, upon which the parties were appointed to be heard. Junior counsel were accordingly heard at great length upon Saturday and to-day. The Court, in respect of the complicated nature of the case, appointed the pursuers to state in a short note the different decrees which they now asked, with the grounds upon which they asked them, and the defenders to state in an answer to the note the grounds upon which they resisted the decrees asked, or any of them. The Court intimated that after these were lodged they would hear senior counsel thereon.