Hudson's Bay Company v Thompson (Valuation Officer)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Viscount Simonds,Lord Reid,Lord Tucker,Lord Keith of Avonholm,Lord Denning |
| Judgment Date | 29 July 1959 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1959] UKHL J0729-1 |
| Date | 29 July 1959 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1959] UKHL J0729-1
House of Lords
Viscount Simonds
Lord Reid
Lord Tucker
Lord Keith of Avonholm
Lord Denning
Upon Report from the Appellate Committee, to whom was referred the Cause Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay (commonly known as the Hudson's Bay Company) against Thompson (Valuation Officer), that the Committee had heard Counsel, as well on Tuesday the 30th day of June last, as on Wednesday the 1st and Thursday the 2d, days of July last, upon the Petition and Appeal of the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay (commonly known as the Hudson's Bay Company), of Beaver House, Great Trinity Lane, in the City of London, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal of the 25th of July 1958, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, varied or altered, or that the Petitioners might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; as also upon the printed Case of A. W. Thompson (Valuation Officer), lodged in answer to the said Appeal; and due consideration had this day of what was offered on either side in this Cause:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of Her Majesty's Court, of Appeal, of the 25th day of July 1958, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Reversed: And it is hereby Declared, That the hereditament described as Warehouse, Offices and Cold Store, Great Trinity Lane, 26-30 Little Trinity Lane, 1-13 Garlick Hill and 1-6 Sugar Loaf Court, "Beaver House" is used for the purpose of adapting for sale of the furs which arrive at "Beaver House" aforesaid within the meaning of the definition of "workshop" contained in Section 149 (1) of the Factory and Workshop Act 1901:
And it is further Ordered that the Cause be, and the same is hereby, remitted back to the Lands Tribunal for further determination of the question whether any manual labour is exercised upon the said hereditament within the meaning of the definition of "workshop" contained in Section 149 (1) of the said Act for the purpose of the said adapting for sale:
And it is also further Ordered, That the Respondent do pay, or cause to be paid, to the said Appellants the Costs incurred by them in the Court of Appeal and before the Lands Tribunal, and also the Costs incurred by them in respect of the said Appeal to this House, the amount of such last-mentioned Costs to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments.
My Lords,
This appeal from an Order of the Court of Appeal affirming a decision of the Lands Tribunal upon an appeal from the Central London Local Valuation Court raises the question whether a certain hereditament in the City of London occupied by the Appellants, the Hudson's Bay Company, is "an industrial hereditament" as defined by section 3 of the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act, 1928. It is common ground between the parties that it is such a hereditament if, and only if, it is a workshop as defined by section 149 of the Factory and Workshop Act, 1901, the relevant part of which I set out:
"The expression 'workshop' means—
( b) any premises, room or place, not being a factory, in which premises, room or place … any manual labour is exercised by way of trade or for purposes of gain in or incidental to any of the following purposes, namely—
. . . . . .
(iii) the adapting for sale of any article, and to or over which premises room or place the employer of the persons working therein has the right of access or control".
The question therefore involves two considerations, first, whether upon the hereditament in question any manual labour is exercised in the manner indicated in the section and, secondly, whether it is exercised for the purpose of adapting any article for sale. Unfortunately, the first of these considerations has been lost sight of in the course of the case and your Lordships have therefore found it impossible to dispose finally of the matter. Your Lordships have, however, found it possible to deal conclusively with the second and perhaps more difficult question, namely, whether the activities of the Appellants, whether or not they can properly be called manual labour, were exercised for the purpose of adapting an article for sale.
The case came before the Court of Appeal upon Case Stated by the Lands Tribunal at the request of the Appellants, the question upon which the decision of the Court was desired being whether there was any evidence upon which the Tribunal could make the findings of fact set out in paragraph 5 of the Case and whether upon those findings it came to a correct decision in law. It will be remembered that under section 3 of the Lands Tribunal Act, 1949, the decision of the Tribunal is final except that any person being aggrieved by the decision as being erroneous in point of law may require the Tribunal to sign and state a Case for the decision of the Court. The contention of the Appellants was that there was no evidence upon which the Tribunal could make the said findings of fact to support their decision that the hereditament in question was not an "industrial hereditament" and that upon the facts set out in the Case and the annexures thereto it was in law an "industrial hereditament".
The materials before the Court were not only the Case Stated, to which as a separate document was appended the lengthy decision of the Tribunal, itself containing a further statement of facts, but also the oral and other evidence which had been before the Tribunal. In view of the form of question and the contention of the Appellants no other course was open, but it involves a detailed consideration of facts which is not altogether appropriate to the procedure by way of Case Stated. I will be as brief as I can, but I see no alternative to setting out the facts first as set out in the formal Case, then as supplemented in the decision and, finally, as explained or amplified in the evidence.
The hereditament in question is described as Warehouse, Offices and Cold Store, Great Trinity Lane, 26-30 Little Trinity Lane, 1-13 Garlick Hill and 1-6 Sugar Loaf Court "Beaver House", and is entered in Part I of the Valuation List for the Rating Area of the City of London at Gross Value £15,818 and Rateable Value £13,178. Your Lordships are not concerned with the question which was at one time raised, whether the hereditament which in fact consists of three parts known as Beaver Hall, the Carpenter's Workshop and Beaver House should be assessed as three separate hereditaments. The sole question is whether the activities carried on at Beaver House are such as to constitute it an industrial hereditament. If they are, the necessary adjustment and apportionment of the rate must be made.
The question in the Case refers specifically to the findings in paragraph 5 thereof, and I cannot fairly abbreviate them. They are as follows:
"5. I am informed that the Appellants desire to contend that there was in point of law no evidence to support my findings of fact set out hereunder: —
(A) "I put it this way—without the sorting and grading the buyer, unless he were himself an expert, would be taking a risk but the skins are still saleable … the conclusion I have come to is that the only effect of the sorting and grading was to certify that the skins were of such a quality as to merit being placed in the category in which they appear in the auction catalogue."
(B) "What is emptied out of the bales that come into the Hudson's Bay Company is not a huge amorphous mass. It is a bundle of easily identifiable individual skins. They are sent in bundles merely for the convenience of dispatch. It is not like the rag case or the seed case in that it is not what has come to be known as a "bulk" case at all. It is not the intention that the skins should be made into a bulk and sold as a bulk. Each skin is sent to the Hudson's Bay Company to be sold as a skin, in fact the owner might send only one skin although admittedly this would be unusual. It is also bought as a single skin although the bidder bids for a lot that are matched. In a word selling in lots is only for the convenience of the buyer."
(C) "All that has been done here was to arrange the skins.
In my view the process carried out in Beaver House, highly technical as I concede it is, is merely an identification of skins and their arrangement in price classes for sale. Nothing has been done to any skin which in any way makes it a little different to what it was before—I ignore the cleaning of the skins in the drum because it applied to a negligible number of the skins dealt with in Beaver House. There has therefore been no adapting for sale.""
At an earlier stage the Tribunal had referred to certain additional facts which were admitted though not referred to in its decision. They were (so far as now material) (1) that very approximately 25 per cent, of the skins coming into Beaver House are owned by the Appellants and 75 per cent, by other persons (but these are very variable figures); (2) that each skin (except musquash) is labelled on arrival at Beaver House with the object of making that skin identifiable as the property of a particular customer at all stages, that large numbers of musquash are dealt with but their value is small both individually and collectively in relation to the Appellants' turnover, usually one bale of musquash providing one or two satisfactory lots, the identity of which can be preserved without...
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