Case Number
CA 84/64
Date Decided
7-30-1964
Decision Type
Appellate
Document Type
Full Opinion
Abstract
At a general meeting of the appellant society a resolution was adopted amending a certain provision of its constitution. The respondents, members of the society, sought a declaration that the resolution was void because wives of members had voted thereon although not formally members themselves. The appellant pleaded that the wives had been duly admitted to membership, that it was customary, as throughout the settlement movement, for wives to become members and that the respondents were estopped from denying such membership. The District Court granted the declaration claimed.
Held, granting the appeal, that whilst normally a person did not become a member unless duly admitted under the relevant law or according to a society's rules, the question was whether or not in formally accepting a husband as a member the intention was to exclude his wife. Such intention could only be established by examining the circumstances. In the instant case, the only conclusion that could be drawn was that admission of a husband included his wife, especially as wives had always been treated as members for all purposes. The mode of admission to membership was left by law to a society's constitution and the statutory definition of "member" was broad enough not to exclude those who became members in some manner other than that specified in such constitution.
A society's constitution was in the nature of a contract between it and its members or among the members inter se. In certain circumstances the contract might be varied by mutual consent evidenced manifestly in long continuous practice. Such variation received the force of a binding usage. That was so in the instant case, wives having been accorded rights and obligations equal to those of their husbands. The court could not equitably disregard this situation and set it at naught.
To hold that the wives were not members would shake the society and others like it to their very foundations since it would render everything done by them void of all legal effect.
Keywords
Constitutional Law, Contracts -- Formation, Contracts -- Interpretation
Recommended Citation
Berinson, Zvi; Manny, Eliyahu; and Agranat, Shimon, "Beth Hananya v. Freidman" (1964). Translated Opinions. 95.
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/iscp-opinions/95
