Morrison v Peters
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 23 June 1909 |
| Date | 23 June 1909 |
| Docket Number | No. 15. |
| Court | High Court of Justiciary |
Lord Justice-General, Lord Kinnear, Lord Pearson.
Review—Jurisdiction to Review—Statutory Limitation—Public-House—Licensing (Scotland) Act, 1903 (3 Edw. VII. cap 25), secs. 102, 103.—
The Licensing (Scotland) Act, 1903, sec. 102, enacts that it shall be competent to any person conceiving himself aggrieved by any sentence in any complaint raised under the authority of the Act to appeal to the High Court of Justiciary ‘provided always that such appeal shall be competent only when founded on the ground of corruption or malice and oppression on the part of the Sheriff … or magistrate … or on such deviations in point of form from the statutory enactments as the Court shall think have prevented substantial justice from having been done,’ and sec. 103 enacts that no sentence, under the authority of this Act, shall be subject to ‘reduction, suspension, or appeal, or any other form of review or stay of execution on any ground, or for any reason whatever other than by this Act provided.’
Held that notwithstanding these enactments, the Court had jurisdiction to suspend any sentence which contained a fundamental nullity.
Review—Sentence—Sentence containing fundamental nullity—Warrant for Imprisonment.—
In a prosecution for contravention of the Licensing (Scotland) Act, 1903, in which the accused was convicted, the conviction and sentence, after imposing a fine and payment of expenses on the accused, continued, ‘and in default of payment thereof within fourteen days from this date, decern and adjudge him to be imprisoned for the space of fourteen days unless said fine and expenses shall be sooner paid, and grants warrant to officers of Court to convey him from the bar to the prison of Inverness, thereafter to be dealt with in due course of law.’
Held, in a suspension, that this sentence was fundamentally null in respect (1) that it granted warrant for immediate imprisonment although it made imprisonment dependent on failure to pay the fine within fourteen days, and (2) that it stated no date from which the term of imprisonment was to run: and conviction quashed.
John Kenneth Morrison, sometime hotelkeeper, Durness Hotel, Sutherlandshire, was charged in the Justice of the Peace Court for the county of Sutherland, at the instance of David Peters, procurator-fiscal of Court, with having trafficked in exciseable liquors without a certificate, contrary to sec. 65 of the Licensing (Scotland) Act, 1903,*...
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