TATIANA KRAJCIOVA AGAINST SULTAN FEROZ

The Sheriff Principal, having resumed consideration of the cause, Refuses the appeal; Adheres to the sheriff’s interlocutor of 17 May 2013; Finds the appellant liable in the expenses of the appeal; Remits an account thereof to the Auditor of Court to tax and to report.

The sheriff had failed to notice the main and important condition of the deal which mentioned in the deed that the appellant was already a resident and was to remain as a resident of the property. While this was the stated ground, the appellant seemed to want to talk about something else, namely that the respondent “has defaulted in giving proof of a wet ink contract”. Despite several attempts by me to persuade the appellant to clarify what he meant by that, he did not do so. On that basis alone, the ground is unstateable.

The sheriff failed to notice the denial by the respondent and her husband that they did not know the appellant and had never been friends, when in fact they had been friends for a long time and had been business partners. The appellant did not refer to the notes of evidence to substantiate this ground. Instead, he preferred to refer to the “suspension of the Gold Standard Act 1925”, to question whether “Scottish notes are legal tender” and to refer again to the lack of a wet ink contract. Accordingly, this ground is unstateable.

The sheriff erred in failing to notice that the respondent introduced herself as a housewife when in fact she was a businesswoman. This was the only point during the hearing that the appellant chose to refer to the notes of evidence. He referred to volume 1, page 3, where the respondent is asked her occupation, to which she answered “I’m a housewife at the moment”. This ground is unstateable. The appellant went on to state that he had offered a promissory note to the value of £154,000 to have the title of the property transferred to him.

The sheriff failed to notice the unprofessional and inappropriate behaviour of the respondent’s solicitor by not identifying exactly if he was acting for the respondent or the respondent’s witness. The appellant failed to address what that behaviour was, in what way it was unprofessional and the relevance of the behaviour, professional or otherwise, to the issues in dispute. Instead, he preferred to assert that the respondent had failed to rebut the answers and the counterclaim. This ground is unstateable.