View report page

12
barren rock would not of course be sterile in the sense of rating law; it
would not produce corn and it would not produce grass, but it would
produce money, and it could not be said to be sterile.
Then it is said again that you are to exclude the School Board
because there are some restrictions as to where they should put a School
and as to what kind of a School it should be. There again the answer
seems to me to be, what have we got to do with that—if the School
Board want these premises and are driven by necessity and by duty
into the field of possible competition. It seems to me that the case
is perfectly plain on principle, and that it ought to be decided on the
ground which I have stated.
As regards the contentions raised in the case, I desire to abstain
from uttering a word on one side or the other, and to leave it to
the future, in case the future raises the necessity to determine as to
whether the contentions in this case set up on the one side or on
the other are correct or not. We have the materials, as was pointed
out by Lord Justice Fry during the arguments, for knowing how
this figure of £1,100 was arrived at or was acquiesed in by the Court,
and that principle seems to me to be a sound one. They have taken
what those premises might be reasonably expected to let for from year
to year, including in the calculation the possibility of a reasonable
chance that the School Board would want them.
Lord Justice Fry: I am entirely of the same opinion.
It appears to me that this is one of those cases in which great mist
has been raised from not referring to the original contract which we
have to construe, but have considered, instead of that, a number of
decisions in which various expressions have been used. Now, tl:e
enactment we have to consider is one which defines the gross value,
and the Statute provided for the uniformity of assessment of rateable
property. The 4th Section of the Statute defines amongst other things
the term "gross value" and it says that gross value means the annual
rent which a tenant might reasonably be expected, taking one year with
another, to pay for a hereditament if the tenants undertook to pay
certain outgoings and so on. That description simply refers to
reasonable expectation. It appears to me that the tenant there referred
to may be any tenant, therefore the definition he refers to annual rental
which any tenant might reasonably be expected to pay for the
hereditament in question to any landlord.
Now it is said that from the tenants whom we are to consider is to
be excluded the actual owner and occupier of the property. It is said