GEORGE PATERSON and JOHN BRUCE v MALCOLM MACNAUGHTAN & Ors, (Macnab's Trustees) (Court of Session)

By the contract of copartnery of the National Bank of Scotland, which is embodied in their charter, it is provided,

‘ Art. 7. That there shall be one stated general meeting of the partners of the company annually, viz. on the first Thursday of December, of which meeting intimation of not less than twenty days shall be given, by advertisement in at least three of the Edinburgh newspapers, to be fixed by the Board of Directors at the time; and at the said meeting the dividend for the year shall be declared,’ &c.

The report of the Directors, which was approved of by the general meeting, held 1st December 1831, bore, that ‘there remains the sum of L. , affording the usual dividend of 5 per cent., which will, as heretofore, be paid at the two periods specified in the charter, of which due notice will be given by advertisement in the public papers.’

A dividend of the National Bank stock was declared in December 1831, and was payable in July 1832. On the 5th April 1832, Mr Macnab died, leaving his nephews, George and Joseph, and a grandnephew, George, by his nephew Robert, predeceased. The trustees thereafter transferred from themselves, as general trustees, to themselves, as trustees for this particular bequest of stock, the three hundred shares, a third of which, with the corresponding dividends, they transferred to the grandnephew, George.

The pursuers having, in 1838, confirmed themselves as executors-dative to Joseph, brought the present action against the trustees of Macnab, concluding for payment of one hundred shares of the National Bank stock, with the half-yearly dividend payable in July 1832, and all subsequent dividends; maintaining that, as Joseph had survived the testator, these had vested in him, and now belonged to them.