Debts Securities (Scotland) Act 1856

5 Different creditors may be joined in one adjudication. U.K.

And in order to lessen the number of adjudications for debt, and the expense to all parties, and to facilitate the pari passu preference of creditors in similar circumstances, be it enacted, that the Lord Ordinary officiating in the Court of Session before whom the first process of adjudication against any estate for payment or security of debt is called shall ordain intimation thereof to be made in the minute book and on the wall, in order that any other creditors of the common debtor who at the next calling of the cause can show that, although they have not executed their summonses of adjudication, they are in other respects, by the nature of the grounds of debt and steps taken by them, in condition to proceed in adjudging the common debtor’s estate, may produce the instructions of their debts, with summonses of adjudication, libelled and signetted, for the purpose of their being conjoined in the decree of adjudication, twenty [F1 sitting days within the meaning of the Rules of the Court of Session 1994] being allowed for such intimation before the cause can be called a second time; and if any of those forms shall happen to be omitted, such adjudication shall be null and void, without prejudice to its being brought forward again in more due form, or still conjoined with any after adjudication; and without prejudice to the validity and order of ranking of posterior adjudications according to the rules of law, when any after process or processes of adjudication are brought into court, the same shall be regulated, as to the time and manner of proceeding in them, by an Act or Acts of sederunt of the Court of Session, so as to provide, as far as circumstances will admit, for the pari passu preference of such posterior adjudications with one another, and to abridge the number and expense of such proceedings; and in all cases where penalties for nonpayment, over and above performance, are contained in bonds or other obligations for sums of money, and are made the subject of adjudication, or of demand in any other shape, it shall be in the power of the court to modify and restrict such penalties, so as not to exceed the real and necessary expenses incurred in making the debt effectual.

Textual Amendments

F1 Words in s. 5 substituted (S.) (1.1.2018) by Act of Sederunt (Rules of the Court of Session 1994 Amendment) (Sittings of the Court) 2017 (S.S.I. 2017/414), paras. 1(2), 3(7)