Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 DECISIONS of the LORDS OF COUNCIL AND SESSION. reported by Alexander Tait, Clerk Of Session, One Of The Reporters For The Faculty.
Subject_2 LYON-COURT.

James Chalmers
v.
Captain Napier

1778. March .

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By the Act 1681, maritime causes cannot be carried from the Judge-Admiral by advocation. But then the question frequently occurs, What causes are properly maritime causes ? Captain Napier, regulating captain at Leith, having, by one of his parties, in a boat, in the Frith of Forth, impressed Gregory, apprentice to James Chalmers, merchant,—Chalmers applied to the Judge-Admiral for redress, and to get back his apprentice. The Judge sisted proceedings until Chalmers should apply to the Lords of the Admiralty. Of this, Chalmers complained by bill of advocation : Napier objected that the cause was maritime, and the bill incompetent; but the Lords were of a different opinion; they thought the cause not maritime. It is not the place where a crime is committed, or where the ground of action arises, which makes a cause maritime or not maritime; the criterion is the nature of the case itself. In this they were unanimous. The point was well treated, both in the papers of this cause, and of another betwixt the same Captain Napier and one Walker at Fountain-bridge, for impressing a man above 55 years of age. This last received no decision, the affair having gone off.

In the case of Chalmers, some of the Lords, particularly Lord Kaimes, thought the interlocutor of the Judge-Admiral a denegatio justitiæ, and that thereby the question, about the cause being maritime or not, was superseded.

See a very early case in the Books of Sederunt.