Commonwealth v. Union League

Citations

• 135 Pa. 301
• 19 A. 1030
• 1890 Pa. LEXIS 1184

Syllabus

<p>1. While an incorporated club, organized for patriotic and social purposes, and owuing property, has not a common-law power to expel a member for a minor offence, it may exercise the power of expulsion, even for such an offence, when expressly conferred upon it by its charter: Evans v. Philadelphia Club, 50 Pa. 107, distinguished.</p> <p>2. A provision, in an act of assembly incorporating such a club, which confers upon it the power of expulsion, and the right to regulate by its by-laws the causes of expulsion and the manner of effecting the same, is not in conflict with the constitution of this state or that of the United States, nor can its wisdom or policy be questioned by the courts.</p> <p>3. Under such a provision, a by-law delegating to a majority of the board of directors the power to suspend members “for acts or conduct which they may deem disorderly, or injurious to the interests or hostile to the objects of the ” club, giving a suspended member the right of appeal to the society, and enacting that, unless the sentence be reversed on appeal, he shall forfeit his membership, is valid.</p> <p>4. It is not necessary that such a by-law should in advance designate and define the vai-ious and specific acts which will be deemed disorderly or injurious to the interests of the society: what is orderly, and what is disorderly and injurious conduct, must necessarily be left to the determination of some appropriate tribunal, and this may legally be done.</p> <p>5. When a member of a club, composed of gentlemen associated together for patriotic and social purposes, has been guilty of rude and ungentlemanly conduct in the club house, in that, without cause or provocation, he charged upon a fellow member, to his face, that he was acting like a blackguard, his conduct is a sufficient cause of expulsion under such a by-law.</p> <p>6. It is not essential to the validity of a conviction upon such a charge that there be a finding, in totidem verbis, that the member’s condu