VANDER POORTEN Vs. SETTLEMENT OFFICER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The only question for determination in this appeal is whether the Supreme Court of Ceylon was right in holding that no appeal lay to that Court against the dismissal by a District Judge of a petition which, for the purpose of dealing with the preliminary objection that the appeal could not be entertained, the Court treated as a "claim" made under S. 20, Waste Lands Ordinance, 1[1] of 1897.

(2.) The facts relevant to this single question are few, and may be shortly stated. The Ordinance of 1897 empowered the Government agent to declare by a notice duly published that any lands which appeared to him to be waste lands should be deemed the property of the Crown unless a claim was made to them within three months from a date specified in the notice and further enacted that if no such claim were made the lands should be declared to be the property of the Crown. On 21 September 1928, such a notice was published in respect of the lands which are the subject of the present suit. No claim was made within the period of three months, which began to run on the date of the notice, but before the lands had been declared to be Crown lands the Ordinance of 1897 had been repealed by the Land Settlement Ordinance of 1931 which provided for the appointment of Settlement Officers, and in terms authorised any such officer "to continue or to complete any action or proceeding taken or commenced under ordinance 1 of 1897". On 5 April 1940, an Assistant Settlement Officer published a notice under the Land Settlement Ordinance by which he ordered that the lands in question should be settled as therein specified, thus dealing with them as Crown property.

(3.) Meanwhile one A, J. Vander Poorten, since deceased, whose executors are the present appellants, had written to the Land Settlement Officer on 30 January 1931, saying that he held the lands in question "in trust for" one Meedeniya and that the same might be settled on him in spite of the writer "being nominal owner," and later, namely on 26 February 1937, by which date Meedeniya had died, he is said by the appellants to have intimated to the Settlement Officer that he withdrew the earlier letter, and to have set up his own claim to the lands. A. J. Vander Poorten died on or about 28 December 1937.