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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  















Agriculture - From: 1900 To: 1929

This page lists 3 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Corporation of Truro v Rowe [1901] 2 KB 870
1901

Wills J
Land, Agriculture
Where a public fishery in tidal waters exists no person - including the Crown - has the right to exclude the public or substantially to interfere with fishery.
Wiles J said: "It is quite true that the oyster-laying may interfere with the uninterrupted user of the foreshore by the owner; but a like interference with territorial rights takes place in many instances which present no legal difficulty. The rights of inhabitants to recreate themselves on a village green have been repeatedly established by evidence and upheld by the Courts, and yet they may absolutely destroy all chance of the owner making any, or any but the slightest, beneficial use of land which is undoubtedly his. The custom here alleged is not open to the objection that it is in substance a claim to a profit a prendre, nor in my judgment to any other legal objection to its validity. Apart from custom, the owner of the foreshore owns and enjoys the foreshore subject to the common rights of all members of the public, which are such as to reduce the value of the foreshore in nine cases out of ten to something of very small pecuniary value. The owner cannot build on it, because the public have rights of passage over it everywhere per mare et per terram. In all but some exceptional cases he cannot graze it, because no herbage will grow upon it. Where herbage will grow upon it, as in the fens, I do not think oysters will be found to be composite factors. At all events, the enjoyment of the foreshore is subject to the common rights of fishing, and if oysters constitute a part of the fish to be taken, the right of fishing must include the necessary and practical incidentals, and if they involve the consequences that in some places the owner cannot dig ballast or sand for sale, as he can generally, he suffers no inconvenience or loss which is not common to him and the owner - for example, - of the village green, who cannot dig pits or do other acts of ownership which would interfere with the rights of recreation of the inhabitants."

 
Mortensen v Peters (1906) 8 F (J) 93
1906

Lord Salvesen
Scotland, Constitutional, Agriculture
The Danish master of a Norwegian steam-trawler was prosecuted for using a particular method of fishing in the Moray Firth. He argued that, although the statute banning the method would have caught a British fisherman, it should be construed as impliedly excepting all foreigners fishing from foreign vessels outside the territorial jurisdiction of the British Crown. Held: The defence failed. Lord Salvesen said that it could scarcely be supposed that the British Parliament should pass legislation placing British fishermen under a disability which did not extend to foreigners: "I think, it was a just observation of the Solicitor General that, if legislation of this nature had been proposed, and the words inserted which the Dean of Faculty maintained were implied, it would never have been submitted by a responsible minister or have received the approval of Parliament."
1 Citers


 
The Attorney General for The Provinces British Columbia v The Attorney General for The Dominion of Canada and Another [1913] UKPC 63; [1914] AC 153
2 Dec 1913
PC
Lord Haldane LC
Commonwealth, Land, Agriculture
Canada - Lord Haldane set out the principles under which fishery rights might be acquired by prescription.
Fish stocks are a public resource, and there is no property in fish until they are caught. The right to fish in tidal waters or in the sea was a right of the public in general and was not dependent on any proprietary title. Interference with such right would at common law be actionable as a public nuisance.
Viscount Haldane LC, speaking for the Privy Council, said: "In the tidal waters, whether on the foreshore or in creeks, estuaries, and tidal rivers, the public have the right to fish, and by reason of the provisions of Magna Charta no restriction can be put upon that right of the public by an exercise of the prerogative in the form of a grant or otherwise."
1 Citers

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