M'Kernan v. Greenock Lodge of United Operative Masons Association of Scotland

Subject_1 Trades Union Subject_2 Compensation for injury. Facts: In a case where a member of a trades union brought an action against the local lodge of the union to compel payment of compensation for bodily injury— held that the action ought to have been directed against the Society as represented by the Central Committee. Question whether the Court might not interfere to make the Society obey its own rules, even though by those rules the jurisdiction of all courts of law was excluded.

This was an appeal from a judgment pronounced by the Sheriff of Renfrewshire (Fraser). The pursuer raised an action against the Greenock Lodge of the United Operative Masons Association of Scotland, concluding for a sum of £80, “being the amount of the provision to members disabled for life by any real accident received while following their employment as a mason, according to the rules and regulations and laws of the said United Operative Masons Association of Scotland.”

The Sheriff-Substitute ( Tennent ) pronounced the following interlocutor:—

“ Greenock , 12 th July 1872.—The Sheriff-Substitute having heard parties' procurators on the relevancy of this cause, in respect that it is stated at the bar that the Association is in course of considering and disposing of the pursuer's claim, and of bringing it before the branches of the Association, who it is stated are, in terms of Law 8, class IV., the parties who are to vote on the claim, and that this will be done in four weeks after the end of July current, continues the cause till the last court day in September.

The pursuer appealed to the Sheriff, who pronounced the following interlocutor:—