Court : House of Lords
Viscount Dunedin.—The present action is raised by a firm of timber merchants against the Highland Railway Company, and asks for repayment of sums overpaid in respect of the carriage of timber for the period from 1st January 1920 to 15th August 1921. The sum actually involved in it is not large, but the question on which the case turns will apply to many other claims by other merchants of a like character, so that the sum involved is really a large one. On the outbreak of the war the supply of pit-props for collieries was brought to a standstill by the ceasing of foreign shipments. It became necessary to meet the demand by home-grown timber. There were available large quantities of timber in Scotland, but much of it in neighbourhoods so remote from transport facilities that, unless transport charges could be lessened, it was impossible to deal economically with the situation. Various bodies were interested in the question. The Board of Agriculture constituted a committee called th...
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Lord Thankerton MY LORDS, The Appellant is pursuer in an action of reparation, in which she claims damages from the Respondent as executor-dative of the late John Young, in respect of injuries alleged to have been sustained by her owing to the fault of John Young, on the occasion of a collision between a motor-cycle which the latter was riding and a motor car on the nth October, 1938, which resulted in the death of John Young, to whom I will hereafter refer as the cyclist. After a proof, Lord Robertson assoilzied the Respondent on the ground that the cyclist had not been guilty of any breach of duty to the Appellant, and this decision was affirmed by the Second Division, Lord Justice Clerk Aitchison dissenting. The facts as to the occurrence of the collision and its relation to the Appellant are comparatively simple. The Appellant, who is a fishwife, was a passenger on a tramway car which was proceeding in the direction of Colinton along the Colinton Road, which may be taken as a south...
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LORD THANKERTON.—This appeal arises out of an assessment to income tax made on the respondent Association for the year ended 5th April 1936, on the sum of 13,492, being the estimated surplus arising in that year from the transactions of the Association with its members. It is not disputed that the assessment was made on the footing that such surplus constituted profits chargeable to income tax by virtue of section 31 of the Finance Act, 1933, and could not otherwise be justified. On appeal, the Special Commissioners affirmed the assessment, and, on the requisition of the Association, stated a case for the opinion of the Court of Session, the question of law being "Whether the surplus arising from transactions of insurance of the Association with its members is assessable to income tax by virtue of the said section 31 (1) of the Finance Act, 1933?" The case was heard by the First Division of the Court of Session, by whose interlocutor dated 20th July 1944 the appeal was sustained ...
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Lord Thankerton MY LORDS, The Appellants, who are the owners and occupiers of dwelling-houses and land situate at Stevenage, challenge the validity of the Stevenage New Town (Designation) Order, 1946, made on the nth November, 1946, by the Respondent, under the New Towns Act, 1946, which had received the Royal Assent on 1st August, 1946. This challenge is made under section 16 of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1944, which provides by sub-section i (b) that the Court, if satisfied that the order or any provision therein is not within the powers of the Act or that the interests of the applicant have been substantially prejudiced by any requirement of the Act or of any regulation made thereunder not having been complied with, may quash the order or any provision contained therein, either generally or in so far as it affects any property of the applicant. The relevant provisions of the New Towns Act, 1946, are as follows: 1.—(1) If the Minister is satisfied, after consultation wi...
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LORD PORTER.—This is an appeal from an interlocutor pronounced by the First Division of the Court of Session on 6th December 1946, affirming two interlocutors of the Lord Ordinary dated respectively 6th and 14th May 1946, whereby he decerned against the appellants for payment of 21, 634, 7s. 4d. for breach of a contract contained in 16 bills of lading issued by the appellants, of which the respondents were endorsees, and for expenses. The pursuers are a Swedish manufacturing firm which on 21st April 1939 purchased through their London agents a cargo of Manchurian soya beans from the Japanese firm of Mitsui and Company. The amount purchased was 8200 tons at the price of 8, 6s. 3d. a ton, or something over 68,000 in all, and the goods were to be shipped on board the appellants' vessel the "British Monarch." Presumably in anticipation of this contract, Mitsui and Company on 4th April had chartered that vessel, which sailed to Rashin in fulfilment of the charter, there loaded the bea...
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Viscount Simonds My lords, The facts in this case are not seriously in dispute, but they give rise to questions of considerable difficulty and importance. The Appellant, Martin Alfred Lister, was, in January, 1949, in the employment of the Respondent Company as a lorry driver. He was then some twenty-seven years of age and had, apart from an interval during the war, been in that employment since he was seventeen. He had previously for a short time been employed by them as a general labourer. On the 28th January, 1949, accompanied as mate by his father, also named Martin Alfred Lister, whom I will call "Lister senior", he drove his lorry into a slaughter-house yard off the Old Church Road, Romford, to collect some waste. In the yard he backed his lorry and in doing so knocked down and injured Lister senior, who had previously alighted from it. In June, 1951, Lister senior issued a writ against the Respondents claiming damages for the personal injuries suffered by him, alleging that they...
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My lords, This is an appeal by six persons who were convicted on 20th February, 1962, and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. They were charged with conspiracy to commit and to incite others to commit a breach of section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1911 namely for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State to enter a Royal Air Force station belonging to Her Majesty at Wethersfield in the County of Essex. In dismissing their appeals the Court of Criminal Appeal certified that a point of law of general public importance was involved and granted leave to appeal to this House. The point of law relates to the proper construction of the words purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the State. Before dealing with it, it is necessary to state such of the facts as are relied on by the Appellants and to notice the course taken at the trial. The Appellants are members or supporters of an organisation known as the Committee of 100. Earl Russell, the founder of this o...
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LORD BINGHAM OF CORNHILL My Lords, 1. Left to myself, I should have accepted the interpretation put by the respondents on the Tomlin order agreed between the parties on 6 April 2001. But no issue of principle on the construction of contracts divides the parties. The Tomlin order is expressed in terms which are one-off. If the appellants' argument on construction is accepted no point of law of general public importance arises. I must acknowledge that the judge adopted the construction favoured by a majority of my noble and learned friends. My own reasons for favouring a different construction differ from those of the Court of Appeal. This being so, no purpose is served by expounding the interpretation which I myself would have put on the Tomlin order, and I am content to accept that favoured by the majority. I would accordingly agree that the appeal should be allowed. LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD My Lords, 2. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speeches of my noble and lear...
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LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD My Lords, 1. I have had the advantage of reading in draft the speeches of my noble and learned friends Lord Hoffmann and Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe. For the reasons they give, with which I agree, I too would dismiss these appeals. 2. I wish to make only one observation of my own. In Wandsworth London Borough Council v Michalak [2003] 1 WLR 617, 625, para 20, Brooke LJ set out four questions which a court might find it convenient to consider sequentially when addressing a discrimination claim under article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Subsequent judicial observations have shown that the precise formulation of these questions is not without difficulty. And at first instance in the Carson appeal Stanley Burnton J suggested a fifth question should be added to the list: see R (Carson) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2002] 3 All ER 994, 1009, para 51. 3. For my part, in company with all your Lordships, I prefer to keep formulation ...
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LORD NICHOLLS OF BIRKENHEAD My Lords, 1. The primary issue on this appeal concerns the application of two double taxation conventions in circumstances not envisaged when they were made. The problem arises from the unforeseen impact of Community law on the partial 'imputation' system of corporation tax operated within the United Kingdom between 1973 and 1999. This system was introduced by the Finance Act 1972 as a means of avoiding the perceived double taxation of distributed profits, once in the hands of the company and again in the hands of its shareholders. The central principle of the new taxation scheme was that part of the corporation tax paid by a company was 'imputed' to its shareholders by giving them an appropriate tax credit. The means adopted for this purpose was that a company was required to pay a tax on its dividends known as advance corporation tax, or ACT in short, and its shareholders were given a corresponding tax credit. Nowhere did the legislation state that liabili...
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