R (County Council of Kildare) v Commissioner of Valuation

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 30 July 1900
• Date: 30 July 1901
• Court: Queen's Bench Division (Ireland)

The Queen (County Council of Kildare)

and

Commissioner of Valuation and Great Southern and Western Railway Company (1).

Q. B. Div.

Appeal.

CASES

DETERMINED BY

THE QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION

OF

THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE IN IRELAND,

AND ON APPEAL THEREFROM IN

THE COURT OF APPEAL,

AND BY

THE COURT FOR CROWN CASES RESERVED.

1901.

Rates — Railway — Valuation — Re-valuation made without notice requiring a revision — Estoppel by conduct — Valuation Acts, 15 & 16 Vict. c. 63, and 17 Vict. c. 8, ss. 4, 5.

Certiorari lies to remove a revised valuation if made by the Commissioner of Valuation in excess of, or without, jurisdiction.

Unless and until a revised valuation is got rid of, either on appeal or by certiorari, the rate must be struck according to such valuation.

The County Council of Kerry having called for the revision of the portion of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company in the county of Kerry, the Commissioner of Valuation re-valued the entire line, and fixed a revised valuation, not only upon the portions in the county Kerry, but on the portions also that were situate in the other counties through which the line ran, including county Kildare. In the result, the valuation of the entire line was, as a whole, increased, but the valuation of the portion in the county of Kildare was diminished. The County Council of Kildare appealed to the Commissioner of Valuation for a re-hearing, but the Commissioner refused to alter his valuation. The Kildare County Council then appealed to the County Court Judge, but the notice of appeal did not state want of jurisdiction as a ground of appeal. The County Court Judge affirmed the valuation as to the main line, but varied it as to a branch line of the railway within the county. On application for a writ of certiorari to quash the revised valuation lists, and the order of Quarter Sessions, as being made without jurisdiction:—

Held, by the Queen's Bench Division, that the revision of the portion of the railway in the county of Kildare, not having been made upon any application (under 17 Vict. c. 8, s. 4) by any ratepayer or collector in that county, was made without jurisdiction, that the order of Quarter Sessions must fall with it, and that the writ must go.

Held, by the Court of Appeal, that (assuming the revision was without jurisdiction) the Kildare County Council were estopped by their conduct from raising the question, and that the order for a writ of certiorari should have been discharged.

Certiorari.

In 1899 the Kerry County Council served notice under section 4 of the Valuation (Ireland) Act, 15 & 16 Vict. c. 63, requiring a revision of the Great Southern & Western Railway Company. The Commissioner of Valuation proceeded to make the valuation in May, 1899, and in doing so he first valued the entire line, and then proceeded to divide the amount apportionable to the different counties. The total receipts of the line were ascertained on an average for three years, from which the landlord's and tenant's deductions were made. The sum arrived at was £156,000, which was divided between (a), stations and buildings; and (b), the line itself. Every station and building was valued separately; and the total of these valuations was then subtracted from the total value of the line itself. This was then divided over the railway as follows:—The Commissioner divided the line into sections of equal traffic as regarded the section itself. A return was then procured from the Railway Company of the train-miles run in each of the sections during the months of January and July; these two months being selected so as to get the summer and winter traffic. The Commissioner then divided the whole valuation of the line between the sections according to the proportion of train-miles run in each. He then calculated the rate per perch on each of these particular sections: and then valued every townland along the line according to the number of perches of each section of railway in each of them at the rate per perch for each section; and the valuation of the railway in the townlands in each rating area so ascertained, added to the valuation of the railway stations and buildings in the same area, he declared to be the railway valuation of the district.

The preceding valuation of the Great Southern & Western Railway was made by Sir Richard Griffith in 1860, who valued the entire line at £140,000.

In 1899, the Commissioner valued it at £156,000. The value of the portion of the line running through Kerry was increased, but the portion running through Kildare was decreased from £29,925 to £23,966 15s.

A copy of this valuation was sent to the Kildare County Council, who appealed to the Commissioner to reconsider his valuation. When the case was heard, the Kildare County Council challenged the valuation as having been made without jurisdiction, on the ground that no notice was received from the Secretary of the County Council, or of any District Council, or from any Board of Guardians in the county. The Commissioner refused to alter his valuation, and in August, 1899, the County Council appealed to the County Court Judge for Kildare. The grounds of appeal were that the trunk line and a branch were both severally valued by the Commissioner of Valuation, and that the valuation ought not to have been altered unless it was proved that there had been such a decrease in the traffic receipts, or increase in the expenditure on the respective sections of the said line, since the last valuation was made, as would justify the reduction of the old ratings; that the valuation by mileage was illegal; and the months selected for ascertaining the engine mileage, viz. January and July, being two of the slackest in the year, would tell not only against the portion of the line nearest Dublin but particularly against that portion of the railway in the Athy district; and that the number of engine miles run without regard to the number of carriages or waggons attached to the engine was unfair to the county of Kildare, and that a scheme of ton mileage ought to have been adopted instead of engine mileage.

The case was heard before His Honor Judge Kane, who confirmed the valuation as to the main line, but varied it as to the branch line. The Kildare County Council applied to the Queen's Bench for a writ of certiorari to quash the revised valuation on the ground that the same was made without jurisdiction.

Cur. adv. vult.

Falconer, Q.C., and D. Kehoe, for the applicants.

The Solicitor-General (George Wright, Q.C.) and Vesey Fitzgerald for the Commissioner of Valuation.

Ronan, Q.C. and D. G. Chaytor for the Great Southern and Western Railway Company.

Palles, C.B.:—

Although the questions argued in this case are serious ones, I do not think we should derive any benefit by allowing it to stand for further consideration, and I therefore proceed to give judgment. In it, we have one net question of law; and also some matters of form, which have been put forward with a view to prevent us arriving at this question of law and the justice of the case.

The question of law is whether there was jurisdiction in the Commissioner of Valuation to make the revision in question.

The points of form relied upon are—(a) the allegation that, when the appeal was first made to the Commissioner, his attention was not called to this question; and (b) that the notice of appeal to the Quarter Sessions omitted to rely upon the alleged want of jurisdiction of the Commissioner.

Later on, I shall deal with these matters of form; but, in the first instance, I shall take the question of right.

Is this valuation binding upon the county of Kildare? Was it one which the Commissioner of Valuation had authority to make?

This question is, in my opinion, free from all doubt. The questions of doubt and difficulty arise upon the bye questions, upon the questions of form. In my opinion, no person can read the 4th and 5th sections of the Act of 1854 (17 Vict. c. 8), without coming to the conclusion that the Commissioner had no power to make this revision of the list of rateable hereditaments in the county of Kildare.

The subject matter of the valuation is the portion of the railway which lies within the local limits of that county. The jurisdiction to make the revision of the valuation of this part of the railway is under the 4th section of the Act I have mentioned. If the revision is not authorised by that section, it was made without jurisdiction, as undoubtedly the case was not within section 20 of the Act of 1852 (15 & 16 Vict. c. 63).

The 4th section of the Act of 1854, as amended by the Order in Council under the Local Government Act, 1898, commences by enacting as follows:—

“For the purpose of providing for the necessary revision of the valuation of the rateable tenements and hereditaments, the limits...