The Gazette 1990

GAZETTE

' APRIL 1990

property was vested and the plaintiff did not attribute any per- sonal responsibility for negligence to any of them. The defendants disputed the plaintiff's claim on the grounds, inter alia, that the plaintiff as a member of the club could not maintain an action against the club. Gannon J. held that the club had no separate legal character distinct from its members. He held that the duty, upon which the plaintiff's action was founded, to observe suitable standards of care in the organisation and running of the dance, was a duty shared equally by all the members of the club, in- cluding the plaintiff. Further, the only liability which might attach to the club for breach of that duty was the vacarious liability of all the members, including the plaintiff, as principals, for the wrongful acts or defaults of their agent, whether a member or servant of the club. Gannon J. held that the plaintiff's contribution to the admission receipts did not avoid his share of the responsibility for observing suitable standards of care. Accord- ingly, Gannon J. held that the plaintiff's action was not main- tainable at law. Raymond Byrne and William Binchy in their Review of Irish Law 1987 at pp 336-338 analyse the decision of Gannon J. in Murphy - v- Roche. The authors comment that Gannon J ' s analysis of the principle issue is somewhat subtle. The rule that in general there is no liability at common law between a club or its members on the one hand and individual members on the other does give rise to con- siderable difficulty and practi- tioners should be aware of the issues involved. The Report of the Probation and Welfare Service with statistics for the year 1988 (PI 6843, price £3.10) recently published by the Stationery Office makes interesting reading. The principal function of the Probation and Welfare Service is to supervise offenders in the community with the specific in- tention of reducing offending be- haviour and offering established programmes of supervision which enable offenders to take responsi- T H E PROBA T I ON A N D . WEL FARE SERV I CE

LAWBRIEF Edited by/Eamonn G. Hall, $rblicitor.

of the club provided that two of its officers were to be responsible in law for the conduct of the club then, in the absence of an express provision that the officers were to be responsible for the condition of the club premises, the rules did not give rise to a duty of care towards individual members to maintain the club premises in a reasonable state of safety and repair and did not qualify the general common law rule that there was no liability between a club or its members on the one hand and individual mem- bers on the other. Accordingly the plaintiff's claim failed and his appeal was dismissed. The issue of liability in negligence of members of a private club arose in the Irish case of Murphy -v- Roche (No. 2) [1987] IR 656. There, the plaintiff was a member of an unincorporated members' club which was managed by a com- mittee which worked without re- numeration. While attending a dance at the club premises, to which he had paid an admission fee, the plaintiff was injured as a result of a fall which he attributed to the negligence of the persons who organised and ran the dance. The monies collected for admission to the dance were applied to the general purposes of the club. The plaintiff commenced proceedings for damages against the defendants as representing the club. The defendants were the trustees of the club in whom its

IS A C L UB L I ABLE FOR A M E M B E R ' S I N J UR I E S? The difficult issue of liability of members of an unincorporated club arose in the case of Robertson -v- Ridiey [1989] 2 All ER 474. The plaintiff, a member of an unincor- porated members' club, was riding his motorcycle out of the club grounds when he failed to see a pothole in the driveway, fell off and was injured. He brought an action against the chairman and secretary of the club as officers of the club, claiming that they were liable for the injuries he had sustained by reason of the condition of the club's premises, on the ground that the rules of the club, which pro- vided that the chairman and secretary "were responsible in law . . . for the conduct of the club", gave rise to a duty to main- tain the premises in a reasonable state of safety and repair. The judge of first instance dismissed the claim, holding that the club rules merely provided that the two officers were to be responsible for those legal obligations already imposed on members' clubs before the rules came into existence and did not give rise to any new duty, with the result that the rules as such did not qualify the general common law rule that individual members could not sue a club to which they belonged. The plaintiff appealed. The Court of Appeal (May, Nourse and Woolf L J J ) held that in so far as the rules

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