(1) As regards the appellant's Minute of Amendment, it was concluded that there

was some doubt as to whether a motion to have it received and answered within 7 days, which bore to have been enrolled on 18 September 2008, had in fact been properly enrolled. Upon the assumption that the motion had been enrolled, the court decided to refuse it for the reasons that, first, in it the petitioner was attempting, at a very late stage in the proceedings, and, in particular, after the decision of the Lord Ordinary, to expand materially her case, introducing issues of fact and law which had not been raised before the Lord Ordinary. In paragraphs 5, 6, 9 and 10 of the Minute the petitioner sought to delete references to Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and to substitute therefor references to the Convention as a whole, thus enabling reliance to be placed on several other articles of the Convention, the legal and factual implications of which had not been the subject of argument in the Outer House and which had not been considered in the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. Second, no justification was advanced for the making of such a motion at such a late stage in the proceedings. Indeed, in the course of argument, surprisingly, senior counsel for the reclaimer expressed complete indifference as to whether the proposed amendment was allowed or not.

(2) As regards the grounds of appeal, the court, on 5 September 2008, pronounced

an interlocutor in the following terms:

"The Lords having heard counsel for the parties, at the By Order hearing in terms of Rule of Court 6.3; on the unopposed motion of counsel for the petitioner and reclaimer allow amended grounds of appeal to be lodged, if so advised, by 23 September 2008; further as agreed by counsel, allow Notes of Argument to be lodged by 23 September 2008."

That interlocutor was pronounced, in part because the court was concerned that the petitioner's original grounds of appeal did not specify what particular remedy or remedies she contended the court should grant. We construed that interlocutor as meaning only that any proposed amendments to the existing grounds of appeal were to be lodged by 23 September 2008. We did not consider that it could be construed as conferring carte blanche upon the petitioner to make at will any amendments that she thought fit to the existing grounds of appeal, without reference to the court. If changes were to be made to the existing grounds of appeal, in our opinion, that could only be done by the court granting leave for their amendment in terms of Rule of Court 38.16(4). What was now being proposed in the "Amended Grounds" were very extensive amendments to those grounds of appeal. The court considered that the proposed amendments went far beyond any matters that could properly arise in the reclaiming motion on the basis of the existing pleadings and the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. We accepted that, at the hearing on 5 September 2008, the court had expressed concern regarding the limited remedy sought by the petitioner in the existing grounds of appeal. For that reason, the court was prepared to allow the proposed amendments to the existing grounds of appeal set out in paragraph 1 of the proposed amendment, subject to the deletion of the expression "Convention rights" in subparagraphs (3) and (4) of paragraph 1 and the substitution in their place of the expression "Article 2 rights". The purpose of that restriction was to ensure that the basis for the remedies sought did not go beyond matters arising out of the pleadings as they stood and the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. As regards the remainder of the proposed amendments to the grounds of appeal, the court was not prepared to allow them to be given effect as they stood, because their subject-matter strayed into areas not arising on the terms of the petition or the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. Should the petitioner desire further to expand the existing grounds of appeal within the confines of what is comprised in the pleadings and the judgment of the Lord Ordinary, that would require to be done in a fresh document.

(3) As regards the petitioner's Note of Argument, the court concluded that it

would not be of assistance to it in its present form, since its contents went far beyond the issues properly arising in connection with the reclaiming motion on the basis of the pleadings in the petition and the judgment of the Lord Ordinary. In these circumstances the court was not prepared to have regard to it. The petitioner and reclaimer's arguments, so far as they were related to matters properly arising out of the pleadings and the judgment of the Lord Ordinary could be deployed orally.