Scottish Court of Session Decisions

William Laidlaw, accountant, Glasgow, was in March 1881 appointed by the Court curator bonis to John Sloane, formerly joint agent of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Limited, Glasgow, on two medical certificates that Sloane was of unsound mind and incapable of managing his affairs. On entering on the management of the estate of the said John Sloane the curator bonis discovered that he was an acting trustee along with James Templeton, manufacturer, Glasgow, and Adam Morrison, writer there, under the trust-disposition and settlement, dated 26th September 1850, and codicil thereto dated 20th April 1858, of the deceased Nathaniel Harvey, banker, Campbeltown, and that he and his co-trustees were entered in the register of shareholders of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Limited, as proprietors of sixteen shares of £100 each (upon which the sum of £20 per share had been paid).

The curator bonis also found that the said John Sloane was, along with Patrick Proctor Alexander and Charles Archibald Campbell, both residing in Edinburgh, acting as trustee under the antenuptial contract of marriage between James Hay Stuart, banker, Glasgow, and Jessie Campbell Harvey, his wife, dated 16th March 1857, and that the trustees under that trust were entered in the register of shareholders of the Commercial Bank as proprietors of twenty-seven shares of £100 each (upon which the sum of £20 per share has been paid).

This was a petition presented to the Court by the said William Laidlaw, as curator bonis to the said John Sloane, in which, after stating the facts above narrated, and that his ward had no beneficial interest in either of the said trusts, he craved the Court “to remove the said John Sloane from the foresaid trusts …. and to authorise and empower the remaining trustees in each of the said trusts to execute the trusts by themselves, and, inter alia, to execute all transfers which may be necessary to divest the said John Sloane of the said stock of the Commercial Bank of Scotland, Limited, and to vest the said stock in themselves as trustees foresaid; or otherwise, to grant authority to the petitioner to resign the trusts in question on behalf of his ward, and to execute on behalf of his ward the transfers which may be necessary for divesting his said ward of the said stock.”

The petitioner produced letters from the cotrustees in both of the said trusts consenting to this application.

Authorities—M'Laren on Wills and Succession, ii. 224, 228, and cases there cited; Walker, July 1, 1868, 6 Macph. 973.

The Court, without delivering opinions, granted authority to the curator bonis to resign the trusts on behalf of his ward.