Scottish Court of Session Decisions

Subject_1 PROCESS.

Herdman
v.
Young

1744, Dec. 11.
Case No. No. 16.

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Herdman having commission from some feuars and inhabitants of Stonehive, dated 1741, raised in 1742 reduction, improbation, and declarator against York-Buildings Company, and others having commissions from them as Bailies, Treasurers, Clerks, and other officers in Stonehive, to have it found that the feuars had the nomination of these officers,—and in the same summons engrossed in the form of a criminal libel a charge against John Young, town-clerk, of a number of grievous oppressions committed by him, not on the pursuer but on many persons, a few named, but some hundreds not named, in the shire of Kincardine, in Young's several offices of Clerk of Stonehive, Sheriff-clerk and Sheriff-substitute of Kincardine, and Clerk to the Peace, concluding a declarator of infamy, incapacity, fraud, &c. This I reported on memorials. Found that part of the libel incompetent, injurious, and defamatory, fined the pursuer in L.10 sterling to the poor, and in the full expenses to Young, and ordered that part of the libel to be delete.—N. B. The pursuer had printed this libel and sent sundry copies north, and after raising it had obtained a commission from eight persons not in the first commission to prosecute it. The Lords seemed to think, though the parties injured had been complainers, that yet such a cumulatio actionum as joining this with the reduction and declarator was incompetent. 2dly, They also doubted of their own power to judge such an accusation, where the pursuit was principally or solely ad vindictam publicam and not for reparation.