A lot of disinformation has been circulated about the Court Order, so here is that document.

Aside from verbal claims that the AROC won the case (!), it has also been said that the AROC would have won had its Chairman, Ed McDonough, been in Court.

At the initial hearing the judge was very keen to question the Chairman, who claimed to be too ill to attend. Instead, the Club sent a solicitor from an area of London not well-known for its low legal fees, who stated that he had not been briefed in the facts of the matter and was only present to get the hearing deferred and moved to London.

The non-appearance of the Chairman seemed to annoy the judge greatly, as did the fact that none of the other AROC MT members (over 10 of them!) appeared to be prepared to represent their Club either. Thus the judge directed that the case remain in Bristol but be deferred to a second hearing with the defendant present.

In the event the AROC chose not to appear in Court at all and agreed to a settlement prior to the second hearing, although continuing to increase their costs with correspondence quibbling over details.

It was very sad that this action became necessary at all, but since the AROC Chairman and MT repeatedly rejected all promptings to fulfil their obligations to run the Club within its Articles and Rules there was no other way to prove that the actions which they had chosen to take were unconstitutional and ill-conceived.

Of course, the claim that the Chairman would have won the case for the Club seems rather unlikely in view of the fact that expensive professionals acting for him could not do so and as he nor any other AROC MT member were willing to back up their actions with a court appearance this seems at best a hollow boast.

Better that none of this should ever have happened and that any alleged problems had been resolved in the manner directed by the Club Rules and Articles in a professional fashion, rather than this expensive and sorry mess being allowed to run for well over a year.

Almost all of the simple points ordered -and agreed to by the AROC- were not fulfilled by the deadlines set by the Court or even those requested by the AROC, although as the directorship appointments were already two years overdue this seems hardly surprising: The Companies Act limit for the Company Secretary to notify such changes is actually 14 days!

The £4500 initial payment of costs was part of the £7200 incurred, but the AROC contested that the charges were unfair and so the remaining £2700 had to be independently assessed at additional cost. These legitimate legal fees -which were only run up due to the way in which the AROC had chosen to act- were actually found to be more than reasonable, but this pointless exercise cost the AROC an additional £1800, bringing their total external liability to £9000, which they eventually paid.

The above amount covers only the claimants legal costs and those of the AROC are additional to this, although the AROC Chairman and MT seem very keen not to reveal how much they wasted in proving that they knew so little about running a Club and a Limited Company.

Link to AROC Page