Decision reserved on orchestra case

Press, 9 June 1977, Page 6

Decision reserved on orchestra case

Wellington reporter

The Court of Appeal has reserved its decision in the application by the Canterbury Orchestra Trust to have several questions answered, to allow it to go ahead with the alteration to its constitution now being considered by the AttorneyGeneral.

The application by the I trust (Mr C. B. Atkinson and Mr G. F. Orchard) to the Supreme Court at Christchurch was defended by Robert Alec Smitham (Mr A. A. P. Willy) and sent to the Court of Appeal.

The Court was asked to rule on three clauses of the trust’s constitution — clause 6 (meetings), clause 14 (alterations and additions to rules), and clause 18 (dissolution and disposal of funds). Mr Atkinson invited the I Court to find that these i three clauses were either outside the power of the i Charitable Trusts Act, 1957, ’and therefore invalid, uncertain, and therefore void, or I repugnant to the trust

upon which the Canterbury Orchestra Trust’s assets were settled, and consequently void. Mr Willy said that it was not conceded the principal matter at issue between the trust and Mr Smitham was the question of professionalism in the orchestra, as Mr Atkinson had suggested in his opening remarks.

“The real question is between a wholly appointed! board of trustees on the one; hand, and a democrat!-j cally elected board on the: other,” he said. The Canterbury Orchestra Trust was not a “charitable” trust under the Charitable Trusts Act, because it was not a charity. Altering the trust’s constitution was not the answer to the mess it was in, but dissolution was. “This Court is being invited to reconstitute the trust,” Mr Willy said. “The alterations were filed with the Attorney-General in May, 1976, but he was declined to move until the courts have decided on the matters raised.”