Scottish Court of Session Decisions

This was a petition for recal of arrestments, presented by John Grant, timber merchant, Cardiff, county of Glamorgan, South Wales, as administrator-in-law for Catherine Flora Grant and others, his pupil children.

Page: 120↓

The petition bore that in 1855 the petitioner purchased a vessel, named the Skylark, and was registered as sole owner: that in February 1864 he sold the vessel to a person named Macdonald, conform to bill of sale, which was entered in the registry of vessels at Liverpool: that on 29th August 1864 Macdonald sold 32–64 parts of the vessel to one Mackenzie, and, on 1st September, the remaining 32–64 parts to the children of John Grant: and that the petitioner's children had, since November 1861, been the sole registered owners of the half-share of the vessel, while Mackenzie was the sole registered owner of the other half. It appeared, further, from the petition, that on 29th June 1866, the respondent Alexander Murdoch Grant brought an action against the petitioner in the Court of Session for payment of a sum of money found due by the petitioner to the respondent in certain proceedings in the Court of Chancery; and, in order to found jurisdiction against the petitioner, arrested the vessel, then lying at Dunvegan, in Skye, ad fundandam jurisdictionem, in virtue of letters of arrestment, dated 23d Juno 1866. On the dependence of this action the vessel was arrested, at the respondent's instance, on 13th September 1866. In December 1866 the respondent raised an action of declarator and reduction in this Court against Macdonald and the petitioner's children, for the purpose of having it declared that the bill of sale by John Grant to Macdonald was solely for behoof of John Grant, and that the bill of sale by Macdonald to Grant's children conferred on them no right in the vessel, and that John Grant was sole owner of a half share in the vessel; and for reduction of the bills of sale. The respondent, in order to found jurisdiction against the petitioner's children, arrested the vessel on 11th December 1866, jurisdictionis fundandœ causa. The petitioner now craved recal of these arrestments.

Answers were lodged by Alexander Murdoch Grant, in which it was alleged that the bill of sale by John Grant to Macdonald was a mere device to protect the vessel from the respondent and John Grant's other creditors; that, after John Grant had raised money on the vessel by a sale of onehalf share to Mackenzie, a re-conveyance of the vessel was made in favour, not of John Grant, but of his children; but these children were all in pupilarity, residing with their father; they had no means to purchase any part of the vessel, nor was any price paid by or for them to Macdonald; and, as Macdonald held the vessel merely in trust for Grant, any payment by Grant's children to Macdonald would just have been a payment to Grant himself.

Counsel were heard on the petition and answers.