Scottish Court of Session Decisions

In that context the Lord Chancellor had earlier commented that in the case before the House the Certificate of Alternative Development which was under attack could be described as "vitiated" because it failed to comply with a mandatory requirement but that it did not follow that the subject could safely disregard it as not having been issued. It had, therefore, been right in that case for the "subject", who was the appellant, to have sought its reduction. However, with all due respect for the ingenuity of Mr. Mitchell's argument, there is, in our opinion, nothing in all of that to suggest that a subject in the position of the present pursuer is entitled to found a substantive claim on a document known by all concerned to have been issued without any statutory authority and, indeed, in the face of all the relevant statutory provisions. The plain fact of the matter is that, as the Lord Ordinary explains in his Opinion, Parliament set up a series of appellate tribunals to deal with complaints such as that in question and Lieutenant Colonel Parrott was not one of these. It is therefore impossible to view any purported decision emanating from him as being properly a decision on the pursuer's complaint.