Heriot’s Trust v Caledonian Railway Co: HL 25 Mar 1915

A railway company in 1867 acquired a certain holding of land lying within the limits of their compulsory powers and took a conveyance substantially in the form prescribed by section 80 of the Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845 and Schedule A thereof, but they did not register the conveyance within sixty days of the last date in it, although they did so on the same day on which it was delivered. The superiority interest was not redeemed, and the company paid the annual feuduty and, on the death of the vassal from whom they had purchased, a year’s rent as composition. In a petitory action brought by the superiors to recover a year’s rent as a casualty of composition due in 1910, twenty-five years after the previous payment, the company maintained that they had a statutory title, and that that extinguished the superiority and consequently the right to a casualty.
Held that the superiors were entitled to recover the casualty.
Per the Lord Chancellor, Lord Dunedin, and Lord Atkinson on the ground that the company, not having observed the requirement of the Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845, sec. 80, as to registering the conveyance within sixty days ‘of the last date thereof,’ had only an ordinary title under which, the superiority interest being unredeemed, they were liable for the feudal casualties, and that as this was the second occasion when a composition was being demanded from the company, a petitory action, and not the statutory action of the Conveyancing (Scotland) Act 1874, sec. 4 (4), was appropriate. Opinions that the statutory title of the Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845 was not an ordinary feudal title in a new form, but was a new species of perfect title which neither required nor enabled the disponee to enter with the superior in the usual way; and observations as to the nature of this title.
Per Lord Parmoor on the ground that where lands were acquired within the limits of compulsory powers for a statutory undertaking, the form of the title was merely a question between the disponer and the disponee, and the superiority interest depended upon the provisions of the statute, viz., sections 107-111 and 126 of the Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845, ‘the feudal prestations being kept alive as a basis on which to estimate the amount of recurring payments or of the final redemption or compensation” until such interest was redeemed. Opinion that the tenure of such a statutory corporation was fee-simple in its nature, the feudal relationship being extinguished.

Judges:

Lord Chancellor (Haldane), Lord Dunedin, Lord Atkinson, and Lord Parmoor

Citations:

[1915] UKHL 549, 52 SLR 549

Links:

Bailii

Statutes:

Lands Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845

Jurisdiction:

Scotland

Land

Updated: 26 April 2022; Ref: scu.620677