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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Scottish Court of Session Decisions >> James Buchanan, Dean of Guild of Glasgow, v Patrick Bell. [1774] Hailes 598 (15 November 1774) URL: http://www.bailii.org/scot/cases/ScotCS/1774/Hailes010598-0344.html Cite as: [1774] Hailes 598 |
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[1774] Hailes 598
Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION, reported by SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE, LORD HAILES.
Subject_2 JURISDICTION - PUBLIC POLICE.
Subject_3 Whether the Dean of Guild has power to make general regulations for removing what, though not strictly a nuisance, may be deemed a deformity, and prove incommodious to the inhabitants and the public in general.
Date: James Buchanan, Dean of Guild of Glasgow,
v.
Patrick Bell
15 November 1774 Click here to view a pdf copy of this documet : PDF Copy
[Faculty Collection, VI. p. 360; Dictionary, 13,178.]
Auchinleck. The plea of prescription now appears to have no foundation in fact: but, at any rate, prescription can have no place here. If the water-barge is a nuisance, no length of time can sanctify it. The good people in Edinburgh were wont, for ages, to throw all their filth out of the windows; but that gave them no right to persist in such an abominable custom.
Kennet. Said that, while on the circuit, he had inspected the water-barge; that it was not necessary to the owner, and was a great deformity.
Gardenston. The Dean of Guild has a discretionary power to remove deformities.
Coalston. By the law of this country, the Dean of Guild cannot take away the right of any person, but he has a discretionary power of regulating
the exercise of that right as to the manner of erecting buildings. A man may desire to build his house with the gavel to the street, but the Dean of Guild may prevent him if he thinks fit. He has also a power to remove nuisances. This water-barge is both a deformity and a nuisance: to remove it, is just the same thing as to remove sign-posts: they were a deformity, and, as being dangerous to passengers, a nuisance. Alva. The discretionary power of the Dean of Guild has always been a favourite maxim of mine.
President. I would not adhere to the interlocutor, even supposing prescription. Whenever there is a visible opus manufactum, no toleration by the carelessness of magistrates can support it. The case of the Luckenbooths is not to the purpose: there, there is a property in the ground, and houses erected on that property. If the water-barge had not affected the public street, I should have doubted.
On the 15th November 1774, “The Lords found the letters orderly proceeded;” altering Lord Elliock's interlocutor.
Act. W. Craig. Alt. R. Blair.
The electronic version of the text was provided by the Scottish Council of Law Reporting
