DISMISSAL OF CLUB MEMBER

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 120, 14 February 1929, Page 6

DISMISSAL OF CLUB MEMBER

REINSTATEMENT CLAIMED ACTION IN SUPREME - COURT Palmerston North, February 13. 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 <oid, that he be restored to the list of members, and that an injunction be issued prohibiting the committee and servants of the club from interfering witli plaintiff’s participation of membership. He also claimed £lOO damages. Mr. 11. R. Cooper, counsel for claimant, submitted evidence along the lines that in December, 1927, a prohibition order was issued against 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 cease to be a member. The secretary then advised him that he had ceased to be a member. Plaintiff claimed that his status as fi member of the defendant club was not affected 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 the meeting on November 2, 1928, determined to suspend plaintiff with the purpose of terminating his membership. Mr. A. M. Ongley, for the defence, submitted that plaintiff, as a prohibited person, had been guilty 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 the 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 40 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 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 lie did not know it when Ongley suggested there never was a mat there. Perry said he agreed not to enter rhe club while his prohibition order was in force. This, he said, expired in December, 1928. He said he would have apologised if he knew he bad 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 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, 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 Jjmae in June if he were 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 were determined to get rid of him. Mr. Ongley said the committee were of the view that the man should not belong to the elub when he bad broken a prohi-. bition 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 said, was a police action. All committee meetings, he said, were held in the stranger's room. It was the first occasion in his 40 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 al a meeting he was satisfied that Perry brought liquor into the qlub 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 Honour reserved his decision.