H G LESLIE v PETER CAMERON & Ors (Court of Session)

Peter Cameron, solicitor in Banff, was married to the deceased Miss Margaret Donaldson, whose fortune, at the period of the marriage, amounted to L.1400, invested in a promissory-note by the Duke of Gordon.

The present process of multiplepoinding was brought, on Mrs Cameron's death, by Mr Leslie, the holder of the L.1400, for ascertaining who had right to the fee of the money. A claim was lodged for Mr Cameron, and also for Mrs Cameron's next of kin.

A great number of cases were cited at the debate, all of which the Lord Ordinary has carefully considered. It is not easy to reconcile them all, but he thinks the result is clearly, that though a technical meaning may have been settled for certain expressions, when taken by themselves, they may be controlled by other expressions in the same instrument; and that the true canon of construction is, that it shall be according to what appears on the whole of such instrument to have been the clear meaning of the parties.

Expenses have been given against the husband, partly because the judgment is rested upon the ground that the true meaning and intention of his own deed was that which he has now been disputing, and chiefly because it appears from his letters, recently before the action, that he (being a professional person) was individually of opinion that this was its meaning.’

Solicitor-General .—If the fund be held to have been tocher, the fee is clearly in the husband, and referred to Elchies, voce ‘Fiar,’ where, alone, the case of Angus was well reported.