The El Condado (No 1)
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 11 November 1937 |
| Date | 11 November 1937 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 90 |
| Court | Sheriff Court |
(Sheriff Macdonald.)
The El Condado (No. 1).
Jurisdiction — Exemption from — Privately Owned Vessels — Requisition by Government when Lying in Foreign Port — Owners' Petition for Injunction against Master — Whether Impleading the Foreign State.
The Facts.—On or about July 10, 1937, the steamship El Condado, the property of the plaintiffs, the Compañía General de Navegación, a company registered in Bilbao (Spain), while lying in the harbour of Greenock, was requisitioned by the Spanish Consul at Glasgow, acting under instructions from the Government of the Republic of Spain and in pursuance of a decree enacted by the Spanish Government on June 28, 1937. The Consul went on board the ship, marked the fact of the requisition in the register of the ship, and took possession of the ship for the Government. When the ship, under the directions of the Government, was about to sail from Greenock, the plaintiffs asked the Court to restrain the defendant Lar-ranaga, the master of the El Condado, acting on the instructions of the Spanish Government, from sailing or removing the steamship El Condado from Greenock harbour and from interfering with the El Condado in any manner or way without leave of the plaintiffs. On July 12, an interim injunction was granted against the defendant Larranaga. Shortly afterwards the Government of the Republic of Spain entered an appearance under protest. It claimed that it had a clear interest to defend the case and was consequently joined as a defendant. In that capacity the Spanish Government denied that the Court had jurisdiction. It asserted that the petition for an injunction against the master impleaded the Government of the Republic of Spain, a foreign sovereign State. The plaintiffs contested this plea on the ground that the decree of June 28, 1937, requisitioning all Spanish vessels registered in the port of Bilbao could not affect the El Condado, seeing that the vessel was at all times outside Spanish territorial waters.
Held: that the Court had no jurisdiction. The Court said: “An action of interdict is necessarily a personal action, and the question arises whether, the action having been taken against the first-named defender, the master of the vessel, the foreign Sovereign was thereby impleaded. In my opinion, if you direct an action against the property of a Sovereign State—and in that case property means any property in which the Sovereign claims to exercise a right—you...
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