Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1Roads and Bridges Act 1878 (41 and 42 Vict. c. 51)
Subject_2Disposal of Funds formerly specially applied under Private Act
Subject_3Repeal of Private Acts.
Facts:

The Roads and Bridges (Scotland) Act 1878 (sec. 4) abolished all Local Acts then in force for regulating and maintaining the turnpike or statute — labour roads in the counties of Scotland, and provided (sec. 11)

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that from the date when it came into operation, which it had done in Perthshire, “the management and maintenance of the highways and bridges should be vested in and incumbent on the county road trustees.” Sec. 32 provided that “the whole turnpike roads, statute-labour roads, highways, and bridges within each county respectively should form one general trust, … . and all the roads, bridges, … . rights, interests, moneys, property, and effects, rights of action, claims and demands, powers, immunities, and privileges whatever, except as thereinafter provided, vested in or belonging to the trustees of any such turnpike roads … . and bridges within the county, shall be by virtue of this Act transferred to and vested in the county road trustees appointed under this Act, who, subject to the qualifications hereinafter expressed, shall be liable in all the debts, liabilities, claims, and demands in which the trustees of such turnpike roads and bridges are or were liable under any general or Local Act then in force, except in so far as such debts, liabilities, claims, and demands may under the provisions of this Act be discharged, reduced, or extinguished.”

The Act further provided (sec. 52) that the management and maintenance of the highways and bridges should be vested in and incumbent on the county road trustees, and that the amount required for the maintenance, &c., of the highways (including bridges) “within each district respectively, or, in the option of the trustees, within the several parishes constituting such district, … . shall be levied by the trustees by an assessment to be imposed at a uniform rate on all lands and heritages within such district, or, in the option of the trustees, within each of the parishes constituting such district as aforesaid.”

Sec. 108 provided that persons acting as trustees under the Local Acts in force should pay and deliver over to the county road trustees any “moneys collected by virtue of such Acts, or any books, deeds, papers,” &c., belonging to the turnpike or statute-labour trusts.

Sec. 119 provided that “All moneys received by the trustees on account of assessments or penalties, or otherwise, for the application of which no special provision is made in this Act, shall be applied as follows:—(1) In payment of the salaries and allowances of officers and servants, and the general expenses of management of the trust; (2) In payment of the expense of maintaining and repairing the several highways; (3) In payment of interest on the debts affecting the highways, valued and allocated as hereinbefore provided, and thereafter towards payment of the principal of such debts.”

Held ( dub. Lord Justice-Clerk Moncreiff), upon a construction of the Act in question, that where funds which had been accumulated from pontages under an old Local Act for the purpose of maintaining a bridge across the river Earn, had, in terms of the 108th section of the Act cited above, been handed over to the County Road Trustees, they were entitled to apply them to the general purposes of the road trust, and were not bound to set them apart for the maintenance and upholding of the bridge in question.

Observed that by the provisions contained in the 119th section of the Act, relating to the disposal of the assessments by the trustees, it was not intended that there should be any priority or order of application.