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Scottish Court of Session Decisions |
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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> Scottish Court of Session Decisions >> Muirhead v. Petitioner [1886] ScotLR 24_18 (29 October 1886) URL: http://www.bailii.org/scot/cases/ScotCS/1886/24SLR0018.html Cite as: [1886] SLR 24_18, [1886] ScotLR 24_18 |
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Page: 18↓
In an application for the appointment of a returning officer to act at the annual election of commissioners for a police burgh, it appeared that neither the provost nor either of the junior magistrates could competently act, and the Court, refusing an application for the appointment of one of the non-retiring commissioners of police, nominated the Sheriff-Substitute of the county to act as returning officer.
This was an application by the Clerk to the Commissioners of the burgh of Hillhead, in the county of Lanark, for the appointment of a returning officer at the annual election of Commissioners of Police, to be held on the 2d November next. He stated that Hillhead was a police burgh in the sense of the General Police Improvement (Scotland) Act 1862, and that its affairs were managed by a body of nine Commissioners of Police, of whom three were magistrates; that by section 50 of the said statute one-third of the commissioners annually went out of office; that among those thus going out of office on the present occasion were the provost and one of the junior magistrates, while the other junior magistrate had recently died; that neither the provost nor the surviving junior magistrate could competently act as returning officer, as both had offered themselves as candidates for re-election; and that the present difficulty arose from the death of the other junior magistrate taken in conjunction with the two other magistrates offering themselves for re-election, for which state of matters no provision had been made by 3 and 4 Will. IV. cap. 76, or any subsequent statute dealing with municipal elections.
He accordingly prayed the Court, inter alia, to appoint as returning officer one of the other commissioners (named in the petition) who did not retire at the present time.
Authority— Police Commissioners of Kirriemuir, Nov. 8, 1884, 12 R. 103.
The Court refused the prayer of the petition in so far as it prayed for the appointment of one of the non-retiring Commissioners of Police as returning officer, and appointed Sheriff Balfour, one of the Sheriff-Substitutes of Lanarkshire, whom failing the senior Sheriff-Clerk-Depute for said county, to be returning officer, allowed the petitioner his expenses, as taxed, out of the burgh funds, and in respect of the day of election being on the 2d November next allowed a certified copy of the present interlocutor to be used in place of an extract thereof.
Counsel for Petitioner— Guthrie. Agents— Morton, Neilson, & Smart, W.S.
