Elm City Club v. Howes

• Decision Date: 02 December 1898
• Parties: ELM CITY CLUB v. HOWES.
• Court: Maine Supreme Court

42 A. 392

92 Me. 211

ELM CITY CLUB

v. HOWES.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Dec. 2, 1898.

(Official.)

Report from supreme judicial court, Waldo county.

Action by the Elm City Club against C. Hervey Howes. Case reported, and defendant defaulted.

Argued before PETERS, C. J., and HASKELL, WHITEHOUSE, WISWELL, SAVAGE, and FOGLER, JJ.

R. F. Dunton, for plaintiff.

W. H. McLellan, for defendant.

SAVAGE, J. The defendant was a member of the Elm City Club, an organized, unincorporated association. He refused to pay his dues to the club to the amount of $24, and for billiards, $5.90, and this action is brought to recover these amounts.

To obviate the technical objection to the maintenance of an action at law which arises when an organized, unincorporated association seeks to enforce a claim against one of its members, inasmuch as he would be in such case both plaintiff and defendant, and as well the inconvenience of suing in the names of all the members in an action against a third person, chapter 191 of the Public Laws of 1897 provides that such an association "may sue in the name of its trustees for the time being."

In the writ in this case the defendant is called to answer unto "the Elm City Club of Belfast, an organized, unincorporated association, which sues this action in the name of Charles E. Knowlton, Ben D. Field, W. J. Dorman, H. T. Field, John G. Damon, Fred G. White, W. H. Quimby, W. C. Libbey and F. R. Woodcock, its trustees." The defendant pleaded the general issue, and the case comes to us on report.

The defendant urges that there is no party plaintiff in court; that the Elm City Club is a legal myth; that a voluntary association as such is not recognized in law as a party to an action. The plaintiff replies that, if the defendant wished to raise the question of ability to prosecute the suit, he should have clone so by plea in abatement. However this may be, we think the action may be sustained in this respect, under chapter 191 of the Laws of 1897, before referred to. That statute says an association may sue "in the name of" its trustees. The Elm City Club, not a myth, but an association of men having enforceable rights, sues this action in the name of its trustees. The pleading is exceedingly inartificial; but we think the language in the writ is substantially equivalent to saying that Charles E. Knowlton, etc., trustees, sue this action for the Elm City Club. It is not an action brought in the name of the Elm City Club by the persons named, its trustees, but an action for the Elm City Club in the name of its trustees. Suits for minors by next friends are not analogous. In such cases the minor is the party, suing by next friend. Here the suit is not by the trustees, but in the name of the trustees, whose names are given, and these trustees are the technical parties plaintiff. The action is sued in their names. It is true that the defendant is summoned "to answer unto the Elm City Club." But that is not all. All of the language used in this connection must be examined to is certain its legal effect. We think there is no difficulty in ascertaining that the persons named were the parties to the process, and the club was the party beneficially interested.

The defendant, in the next place, says that the action cannot be maintained, because the parties named were not in fact trustees. This defense should have been made by...