300.115/20763
The Consul General at London (Skinner) to the Secretary of
State
London, July 23,
1920.
[Received August 6.]
No. 9946
Sir: I have the honor to refer to my
telegram of July 22 [23], 1920,49 reporting a very important
decision of the Prize Court relating chiefly to American goods held
under the Order in Council of
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March 11, 1915, and to transmit herewith
prints of the judgment in question, as reported in the press.
The Department will note that goods are to be released, or deposits
made in the course of the war in exchange for the goods are to be
released, subject to the payment of expenses properly incurred and
cost of insurance.
The Procurator General is now empowered to grant release in
particular cases where the title of the claimant is established to
his reasonable satisfaction.
I am prepared, therefore, to receive instructions from the
Department, or applications from particular claimants in respect of
their goods. Naturally, the cases already before me will be
re-examined and dealt with in the light of the new situation.
A full transcript of the proceedings of the Prize Court leading up to
the decision, will be forwarded as soon as prints can be obtained
and put in order.
I have [etc.]
[Enclosure]
Press Report of the Judgment, July 22, 1920,
of the Prize Court in the Cases of the “United States” and
Other Vessels
Judgment was delivered in these test actions, which were brought
before the Court under a recent order of the President to decide
how goods (or their proceeds) which were seized under the
Reprisals Orders in Council and were ordered to be detained
until the conclusion of peace, on the ground that they were
goods of enemy origin and/or enemy property, should be disposed
of.
The Crown did not oppose the release of the goods if the Court
were satisfied that they now belonged to neutrals, and it
invited the Court to lay down principles on which subsequent
cases should be dealt with.
Mr. Raeburn, K.C., Mr. L. F. C. Darby, and Mr. Wilfrid Price
appeared for the American claimants; the Attorney-General (Sir
Gordon Hewart, K.C.), the Solicitor-General (Sir Ernest Pollock,
K.C.), and Mr. James Wyllie for the Procurator-General.
Judgment
The President, in his judgment, said
that whether the matter was considered generally under the Order
in Council, or in the light of the practice of the Court in
prize, the terms on which it was just that these goods should be
released were, in his view, terms of payment by the claimants of
the expenses properly and necessarily incurred by the Marshal in
the handling of their parcels. As to insurance,
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in ordinary circumstances captured
goods in the custody of the Marshal under a claim of
condemnation did not bear the expenses of insurance, where they
had not been incurred by order of the Court or at the request of
the claimants. That practice resulted from the relative
positions of the captor and the claimant with regard to the
property in the goods, and from the obligations properly
belonging to the Marshal. Goods held by the Marshal for an
owner, who by his own act, had subjected his property to
detention seemed to him, however, to be subject to other
considerations. No captor had an interest in them. The Marshal
was charged with their safekeeping for the sole purpose of
eventual restitution. He had incurred expenses of insurance on a
system recognized in the Registry, with the result that from
time to time various claimants had received policy moneys for
goods which, without negligence, had been destroyed and on which
they would otherwise have suffered a total loss. Insurance was a
wise and almost indispensable precaution in these cases. In his
opinion it was just that the cost of the insurance should be
borne by the owners of the goods, and he directed that they
should be so borne.
Outside the main question of expenses, he had been asked by the
Crown for some expression of opinion about the conditions under
which detained goods should ordinarily be released, and in
particular about proofs of ownership to be required and the
precautions which were proper to avoid claims by persons who
were not now on the scene. He did not think it necessary to say
more than that the Procurator-General was under no obligation to
consent on his own responsibility to the release of goods where
the title of the claimant was not established to his reasonable
satisfaction.
The order proper to be made in each of the cases before the Court
was an order for restitution to the several claimants on payment
in each case of the expenses properly incurred, including costs
of insurance, the amount of such expenses in case of dispute to
be determined in the Registry.
Solicitors:—Messrs. Thos. Cooper and Co. for the claimants; the
Treasury Solicitor for the Procurator-General.
