On Monday 02 March 2009 21:56:48 Adam Bower wrote:
Please elaborate on this, I am very interested to hear who you think
would have any power to compel me to answer to them and for what
reasons.
Go to a library, find a book on the law of meetings, when AFFS was set up,
and its rules were being adapted from a set of model rules, I think the
title of the book that I and others borrowed had the title, "The Law of
Meetings", due to Sedition, Riot, public order and the American War of
Independence, a huge body of law, civil and criminal has evolved around
meetings, their conduct, and the bodies that hold them. Look up the
section that covers the conduct of the business of an association, the
members access to minutes, membership, expulsion, and most importantly who
it is that carries the responsibility when things go wrong. It is the
members of the Committee, or whatever title the decision making body has!
That is why bigger associations indemnify the members of their committee,
against loss if they make the wrong decision, as the members can recover
any losses from them, separately and severally, i.e. if the members need
£1,000,000.00 repaid to them because the committee didn't spend it in a
proper way, then if one member has more money than the others, the money
can be recovered unevenly, taking everything from the poorer members, and
the balance from the one who was a multi millionaire, or of course the
other way round, taking all the money from the multi millionaire, as the
others have no assets.
As I remember it the most common cases arise around the misuse of the
associations funds, and expulsion, (Young v The Imperial Ladies Club?), a
matter concerning what the Committee had the right to do, which seems to
be applicable here, and it revolved around a lack of notice being given to
someone who had had their membership revoked. The precedent should be easy
enough to find.
In the case of the AFFS, we are looking at a matter which seems to
escalated quite quickly over a weekend with those who were involved,
getting quite heated because they are being asked to explain their past
actions or neglect, when I set out to find out what had happened in order
to make sure that any new rules made the workings of any revived body
easier.
For most of the small associations that exist there are no problems, and
the committee members do not realise that they have such onerous
responsibilities, However when things do go wrong, as in this case, in
particular with your making remarks such as " you have only acted in a
manner that would suggest you wish to carry out a witch hunt", "you can
ask these questions until the heat death of the universe", "It's because
you have no interest in doing anything with what is left of AFFS right
now", " anything else will be ignored if coming from John Seago", it does
tend make a bad situation worse. But as I have pointed matters escalate
quite quickly, even when no conflict existed in the first place. However
you should be aware that failing to adhere to the Constitution, or even
simply making mistakes, leaves all the Committee, (and as I understand
even those who were not present when the mistake was made, responsible,
and liable).
Now I am not saying that matters will come to that point, but others have
been making statements to this list concerning the 'legal' position of the
AFFS, its members, their membership, the loss of their membership, etc.,
etc., and from what I remember of the case that I was involved in it
included all the members of the Committee at the time of the action, even
those who had not been at the meeting that took the action, (see the
exchange of messages between myself an Jason Clifford).
If you are concerned, I will give you the same advice I gave him, see a
solicitor, because the committee in question included you, and as it is
not clear what it did when and why, you are included. But again as I said
don't take my advice on this matter, I was only ever involved in one case,
on the winning side, go and see a solicitor, as I am not one, and even if
I was my opinion would not be free.
I think that I have been quite 'elaborate' enough above