Legal Subject: Construction

Case Date Legal Subject Abstract
Forbes v. Home 1772 Construction, Property Sir William Forbes, along with many others, were proprietors of feus (a type of land tenure) in the extended royalty of the city of Edinburgh. The properties at issue were located on Princes Street, George Street, Queen Street, and near St. Andrew's Square. Forbes and his fellow pursuers claimed that the town council had imposed some sort of restrictive covenant, prohibiting construction south of Princes Street, which would have given them an unobstructed view from their properties. John Homes and his fellow defenders secured permission, apparently from the town council, to construct houses, warehouses, and other buildings south of Princes Street. Forbes and the other pursuers sought to stop the construction while the defenders argued that they had permission to build.
Moir v. Harlaw 28 Jan 1802 Feu, Church, Construction In the parish of Peterhead, the church had fallen into disrepair. The landowners in Peterhead advocated for building a new church, with expenses for its construction being dispersed across the population of the parish. Renters in the town, or feuars, believed this approach to be unfair given that they would be the ones bearing the majority of the cost of construction. Instead, they claimed that the landowners had decided to build a new church in order to put the financial burden on the feuars. Since the landowners owned the old church exclusively, they would have been responsible for financing all repairs made to it, and so the feuars believed that the landowners purposely pronounced the old church unsafe rather than making repairs to it in order to avoid paying more. Marginalia notes that the case was reversed on June 24, 1802 with the holding that the expense of building a new church in a parish with both heritors and feuars should be divided between them based on their respective populations.