The Gazette 1918-19

62

The Gazette of the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland.

[APRIL, 1919

A sum of £228 17s. Od. has been received up to date. It is intended that a list of the subscribers will be published in a future number of the GAZETTE. Barristers and Solicitors (Qualification of Women) Bill. THIS Bill provides for the admission of women (1) as Students of the Inns of Court and being called to the Bar and practising as Barristers ; and (2) as Solicitors under the Solicitors Act, 1843, and the Acts amending the same. The Bill does not extend to Ireland. It has passed the House of Lords and has been sent to the House of Commons. The Lord Chancellor has inquired from the Council as to their attitude towards an amendment, should it be proposed, making the Bill applicable to the Solicitors' profes sion in Ireland, and the Council have replied to His Lordship-that the Council would offer no objection to an amendment making the Bill applicable to the Solicitors' profession in Ireland, provided that the Bill be also made applicable to the Barristers'" profession in Ireland. Easter Sittings Lectures, 1919. LECTURES will be delivered to the Junior Class on the following dates, at two o'clock p.m. :—April 24,. 28, 30 (Wednesday). May 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, 22, 26. Lectures will be delivered to the Senior Class upon the following dates, at two o'clock p.m. :—- April 25, 29. May 2, 6, 7 (Wednesday), 9, 13, 16, 20, 21 (Wednesday), 23, 27. Dates of May Examinations, Final.— Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 21, 22 and 23 May, at 10 o'clock a.m., each day. (Notices to be lodged in Secretary's Office before 6th May.) Preliminary. —Thursday and Friday, 29 and 30 May, at 10 o'clock a.m., each day. (Notices to be lodged in Secretary's Oifice before llth May.)

Recent Legal Decisions.

Allowance of Income Tax Claim as a deduction from rent independent of production of receipt. The decision of the Lords Justices of Appeal in the case of North London and General Property Co., Ltd. v. May, Ltd. (Law Times Reports, Vol. 119; p. 230)", disposes of a contrary proposition often insisted upon in the collection of rents, namely, that unless the claim for deduction of income tax from the rent, or on account of the rent, is vouched by production of official receipt, the claim need not be allowed.- Under some circum stances the demand for such receipt is reasonable, but under others insistence is unnecessarily vexatious, compliance being often inconvenient or impracticable to the tenant, e.g., where he is a middleman in receipt of ground rents paid to him by a large number of tenants out of property in respect to which he pays the chief rent. In the above-mentioned case, on appeal from the King's Bench Division, and in reversal of judgment of Low, J., the Lords Justices decided that though a request for production might be a reasonable one, yet in order to establish right to deduction, no obligation rested on a tenant to support his claim by production of the receipt, and that the landlord refusing on. this account the proper refund or allowance does so at his own risk. In Hatch v. Hatch (L. T. R., Vol. 146, 367) the decision of Mr. Justice Sargant confirms the well-known principle that payments made under mistake in law are irrecoverable. The question arose in the administration of the estate of a deceased testator who had lived separated from his wife, and who was bound by deed of .covenant to pay to her an annuity in lieu of alimony. The testator during his lifetime paid this annuity without deducting income tax, and after his death the. trustees of his j Will continued payment without deduction. | In the course of the administration pro- j ceedings the trustees sought refund of the over-payment to the widow annuitant by reason of the non-deduction of income tax. It was held, however, that the annuity being Mistake in Law.