Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Patrick Grant Ritchie, only child of the late Patrick Ritchie, Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh, sued the defenders, who were the trustees nominated by his father, for reduction of a deed which he had signed in 1860, whereby he renounced and discharged all his claims as the next-of-kin of his mother, who died in 1830, and also his right to legitim out of his father's estate. There were also ulterior conclusions for count, reckoning, and payment. The grounds of reduction were (1) that the deed had been fraudulently impetrated from the pursuer by his father; and (2) that when he signed it the pursuer was under essential error as to its substance and effect.

The pursuer proposed two issues for the trial, which put these two grounds generally in issue. The defenders objected to the first issue, that it did not specify the nature of the fraud said to have been practised on the pursuer by his father; and to the second issue, that no case of essential error was relevantly averred on record.

Page: 107↓

Lord Barcaple reported the case with an opinion in favour of the defender's contention in regard to the first issue, and against it in regard to the second, but stating that he thought the nature of the essential error should be specified in the second issue as well as in the first.

The Court disallowed the issue founded upon the allegation of essential error, and allowed two issues for the purpose of proving that the deed was impetrated by means of false and fraudulent representations to the effect in the case of the one issue that nothing was due to the pursuer as next-of-kin of his deceased mother, and in the case of the other, that the deed was, on the part of the pursuer, merely an assignation or transference by him to his father of certain shares therein mentioned.