Harbour – Statutory Trustees – Land Acquired for Statutory Purposes – Ultra vires
Where the Legislature has for a public purpose granted power to a public company to take lands compulsorily, such company cannot bind itself only to make a use of the lands so acquired more limited than for the public advantage the Legislature has entitled it to make.
Harbour trustees having power to take certain lands for the use of the harbour, and thereon to form wharves, erect buildings, and form roads, served upon the proprietor statutory notice to take a piece of ground lying next the harbour, and the erection of buildings on the part of which nearest the harbour would shut off the remainder from its frontage to the harbour. In the course of an arbitration to fix the compensation payable to the proprietor, the trustees put in a minute agreeing that the conveyance to be granted by the proprietor should be qualified by a declaration that they should not erect sheds or warehouses on the ground, and should form and maintain a road adjoining the remainder of the proprietor’s ground.
Held: (aff. judgment of Court of Session) that the trustees being entitled under their statutes to erect warehouses, and co, on the ground if the public advantage required it, and to a full use of the ground for the purposes of the harbour, could not bind their trust to a restricted use of it, and therefore that the proprietor was entitled to compensation on the footing that the ground was acquired absolutely, and that the frontage might at any time be cut off.
Judges:
Lords Blackburn, Watson, and Fitzgerald
Citations:
[1883] UKHL 873, 20 SLR 873
Links:
Jurisdiction:
Scotland
Land
Updated: 30 June 2022; Ref: scu.636766