Scottish Court of Session Decisions

C D, an enrolled law-agent, pleaded guilty, on July 20, 1894, to an indictment alleging (1) That he did utter as genuine a document bearing to be a certified copy of a pretended interlocutor by the Honourable Lord Low, granting warrant upon the Bank of Scotland for payment to the panel of the several sums of money therein mentioned, amounting in all to the sum of £35, 19s. 11d., on which document the name of ‘James D. Fraser’ to be signed, as the party certifying said document to be a true copy, such signature being forged by the panel, by presenting said document to a clerk to the Accountant of Court for the purpose of the panel receiving from him the deposit-receipt referred to in said pretended interlocutor, to enable the panel to draw said sums, which deposit-receipt the panel received. (2) That in the head office of the Bank of Scotland, Bank Street, Edinburgh, the panel did utter as genuine another document, also bearing to be a certified copy of said pretended interlocutor, the signature ‘James D. Fraser’ thereon being forged by the panel, by presenting said document in said bank for the purpose of the panel receiving payment from said bank of the sum of £35, 19s. 11d.

Sentence of fifteen months' imprisonment was pronounced.

On 23rd June 1896 C D addressed a letter to the Registrar of Law-Agents, instructing him to remove his name from the register, which he accordingly did.

On 22nd January 1897, on his own application, the name of C D was removed from the roll of law-agents practising in the Court of Session, and from the roll of law-agents practising in the Sheriff Court of the Lothians and Peebles.

In 1901 C D presented a petition in the Court of Session, in which he prayed the Court “to re-admit the petitioner as a law-agent … and to decern and ordain the Registrar of Law-Agents to restore the name of the petitioner to the Register of enrolled Law-Agents kept in terms of the statute thereanent; and also to decern and ordain the Keeper of the Register of Law-Agents practising in the Court of Session, and the Keepers of the Registers of Law-Agents practising in the Sheriff Courts of the Lothians and Peebles, to restore the petitioner's name to the said registers.”

The petitioner averred that since the expiry of his sentence he had acted as a clerk to a law-agent. He produced a number of letters in his favour from his employer and other persons with whom he had been connected in business and otherwise, besides a certificate in support of his application signed by twenty-one law-agents practising in Edinburgh.

Answers were lodged by the Incorporated Society of Law-Agents, submitting that the prayer of the petition should be refused, and stating that they had received a letter from the secretary of the Society of Procurators of Midlothian intimating that the council of that body had unanimously resolved that they disapproved of the petitioner's application.

The following authorities were cited:—For the Petitioner— A B v. Incorporated Society of Law-Agents, July 9, 1895, 22 R. 877, 32 S.L.R. 660; Robins, 1865, 34 L.J. Q.B. 121; Unwin, 1882, 72 L.T. 388; Brandreth, 1891, 60 L.J., Q.B. 501. For the Respondents— Society of Solicitors of Elginshire v. Shepherd, February 16, 1881, 18 S.L.R. 303; Parker, 1882, 73 L.T. 216; Garbett, 1856, 18 C.B. 403.