SEAMEN’S UNION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20644, 16 February 1929, Page 27

SEAMEN’S UNION.

LOAN OF £IO,OOO TO MINERS. ACTION VALID. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, December 24. Mr Justice Romer, iu the Chancery Division, gave judgment in the case of Cotter and others v. the National Union of Seamen. The case was one iu which plaintiffs sought to restrain Mr J. Havelock Wilson, general president of the National Union of Seamen, and other officials from acting on resolutions authorising a loan of £IO,OOO to the miners’ non-political movement and confirming the suspension of some of the plaintiffs. He found the union was a definite unity, which might sue in its registered name, that a majority of the meeting would biml the minority in matters not ultra vires to the union, and that they could pass resolutions in the terms of the £IO,OOO resolution. It was not open to the plaintiffs to restrain the union from acting on the £IO,OOO resolution of August 1, however that meeting might have been summoned or conducted, nor could the plaintiffs obtain any relief in respect of the suspension resolution. Their remedy would be in damages and no damag were asked for.

It was suggested that the agenda of the special meeting did not give notice that it> was proposed to discuss the loan to the miners. He could not hold that it “was bad in law if the special meeting passed anything not, before the executive, but the £IO,OOO proposal was before it. He found the resolutions binding on the members, and ho should be sorry to find otherwise, for that wolud say that the annual general meeting for years past had been wrongly constituted. The action must be dismissed.