CLUB SENSATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 39, 15 February 1929, Page 5

CLUB SENSATION.

A MEMBER SUSPENDED.

"SLIPPED ON THE MAT."

CLAIM FOR REINSTATEMENT.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.)

PALMERSTON NORTH, Thursdav

Action was taken by Stanley Gordon Perry, farmer, of Waituna, in the Supreme Court before Mr. Justice Smith to-day against the Feilding Club, Incorporated, claiming that the resolution of his suspension from the club was null and void, that he be restored to the list of members, and that an injunction be issued prohibiting the committee and servants of tho club from interfering with plaintiff's participation of membership. He also claimed £100 damages. Mr. H. R. Cooper, counsel for claimant, submitted evidence along tho lines that in December, 1927, a prohibition order was issued ajrainst plaintiff on his own application. On August 31, 1928, at a special general meeting a motion was passed to amend the rules of the club to include that any person with a. prohibition order issued against him should ceaso to be a member. The secretary then advised him that he had ceased to be a member. Plairftiff claimed that his status as a member of the defendant club was not aifected by the alterations to the rules. On request he attended a committee meeting of the club on November 2, 1928, but, he alleged, he was not given a reasonable opportunity of defending himself and meeting accusations brought against him. He submitted that the committee, in passing the resolution, did not act in good faith, but maliciously and without reasonable and probable cause, and had prior to the holding of tho meeting on November 2, 1928, determined to suspend plaintiff with the purpose of terminating his membership. Mr. A. M. Ongl.n, for (ho defence, submitted that plaintiff, as a prohibited person had been piiilty of gross misconduct by coming into the club premises in a drunken condition, and in possession of intoxicating liquor, and offering intoxicating liquor to the steward of the club for consumption. At a duly convened meeting of tho committee, notice of which was given to plaintiff, and at which plaintiff attended, he was suspended as a member of the club. Plaintiff did not avail himself of the privilege that if plaintiff was not removed by the committee within one month then he was entitled to have the question decided by the members within forty days.

Stanley Gordon Perry, claimant, said he had been a member of the club since 1912 or 1913. Following bankruptcy he was discharged in August, 1928, and he was reinstated as a member.

In reply to Mr. Ongley witness said it was practically put to him that because he slipped on the mat he was drunk. He said he did not know it when Ongley suggested there never was a mat there.

Perry said he agreed not to enter the club while his prohibition order was in force. This, ho said, expired in December, 1928. Hβ said he would have apologised if he knew he had misconducted himself in June. He was refused information as to who was acting as witness against him.

In reply to Mr. Ongley, Perry said he would suggest that Messrs. Goodbehere and Sandford (manager of the Union Bank) were biased against him. Prior to the bankruptcy he ran over Goodbehere in avoiding another man with him after he had left the club. Since he ran over Goodbehere he thought he was biased because of the latter's general behaviour towards him. He heard nothing of the matter until he was called to attend the committee meeting, which was held in the strangers' room, contrary to the usual practice. What he could not understand, he said, was why he was allowed to drive home in June if he was intoxicated, and nothing was said about it until later, in October. He remembered a conversation with the secretary of the club, when he was told that the committee was determined to get rid of him. Mr. Ongley said the committee was of the view that the man should not belong to the club when he had broken a prohibition order, and wanted to get him out as quietly as possible. Edmund Goodbehere, president of the Feilding Club for the last four or five years, said he was not biased at all towards Perry. The action following the accident, he eaid, was a police action. All committee meetings, lie said, were held in the strangers' room. It was the first occasion in his forty years' association with the club that it had come to the knowledge of the committee that a member had a prohibition order out against him. At the conclusion of the evidence at a meeting he was satisfied that Perry brought liquor into the club during the period of his prohibition order. He first heard this about the time that it was decided to alter the rules. He stated to Cooper that his evidence, he had been told by several people, had been effective in securing the dismissal of a police charge against Perry at the time of the accident. His Honor reserved his decision.