LEASES ON THE WEST COAST

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 98, 18 January 1918, Page 7

LEASES ON THE WEST COAST

THE VALUATION DIFFICULT. Judgment has been given in the Supreme Court by Their Honours the Chief Justico (Sir Robert Stout), Mr. Justice Chapman, and Mr. Justico Hqsking in the case of Samuel Thomas Cox against the Publio Trustee. Tho case was brought under the Declaratory Judgments Act, and concerned two leases granted to Cox by the Public Trustee under the West Coast Selement Resrvs Act. .The Court was asked a number of questions for the purpose of guiding the valuators" in defining the value of the fee simple of the land as one item and the value of existing improvements. In tho course of a long and exhaustive judgment the Court expressed the opinion that in valuing the fee simple the land with tho improvements must be dealt with as a whole. "That value is tho capital value, into which tho value of. tho improvements enters as an indiscriminated part," said the Court. "Wo deduce fro mthis that in valuing tho improvements for the purposes of those leases tho point of view of the melioration they effect upon tho land as land in an absolutely unimproved state must be considered, and that ope element or test of thoir value may well be what a now tenant would givo for them if any existing tenant did not renew; for in that case the new tenant has to pay over tho value of tho improvements as ascertained by the arbitrator's valuation, subject only to a deduction for destruction or damage. There is no method or process laid down by the acts which tho arbitrator or valuer must pursuo in determining the valuo whether of tho fee simple or of tho improvementg. i and it appears to us that the particular method or prooess adopted is immaterial as a matter of law provided accurate results are thereby obtained. It would be unwiao to hamper the free operation-of arbitrators or valuers in the ruling of fact and opinion by laying down anything which is not strictly a rule of law."