Originally Posted by
Madball
Hi, I wonder if anyone could advise me in this ownership dispute.
Unless you can sit down and agree this amicably you will need to get lawyers involved, because much of this doesn't seem to make sense. Just taking what you said:
University Flying Club was a part of University Sports Union.
So the flying club was a "part" of the Sports union. OK.
In 2008 Flying Club bought an aircraft, funds came partially from Sports Union partially from private donations.
In what proportions? Were any charges, conditions or coveneants attached to the funds?
Final invoice came to Flying Club.
So was the flying club a separate legal entity, with its own directors, company secretary and annually-filed accounts, or was it just a named group within the Sports Union? Was the Sports Union itself a legal entity?
Flying Club has also nominated two Trustees to become registered owners.
To be registered owners of an aeroplane the trustees need to have at least a partial ownership claim of some sort - otherwise this was an illegal registration. Was this claim as directors or shareholders of the flying club, or officers of the sports uniion or what?
In 2014 Sports Union made a decision to close Flying Club
On what basis? Was the flying club a "wholly owned subsidiary" of the sports union? If not did the directors of the flying club concur?
...and Executive Committee of Sports Union decided that all assets of Flying Club will be transferred to Sports Union (process is not specified in Sports Union constitution).
Well if the flying club was wholly owned by the sports union then they probably have complete freedom to do this restructuring unless it's explicitly prohibited in the Sports Union constitution or violates the terms of the original donations.
This decision was not communicated to Trustees (they've only learnt that this week) and Sports Union has failed to meet its obligations to notify CAA of change of ownership so aircraft remains registered under two Trustees of a Club (that doesn't exist).
This bit is rather strange, but then if the trustees' ownership claim only sprang from an appointment/post in the flying club then when the SU restructured that claim would cease to exist (unless the trustees were re-appointed to new posts in the sports union). There is a technical violation in not informing the CAA, but then as I understand it the registration does not denote ownership - it merely registers an ownership arrived at through other means.
Recently Trustees together with former members of a Flying Club started to make enquiries about this aircraft but have been told to step back because it belongs to Sports Union.
As you've described it I suspect they have a good claim, but if you can't agree it amicably then you will need lawyers to scrutinise all the documents and come to a decision. How long had it been between the flying club being "absorbed" back into the SU and the "Trustees together with former members of a Flying Club starting to make enquiries about this aircraft"? Days/weeks/months/years/what?
My question is who is the owner of this aircraft (and on what grounds).
And is there any chance for Trustees to get this aircraft back?
Where is the aeroplane? Is it under the control of a subpart-g organisation? Who has been maintaining it? Who has been paying the subpart-g organisation for maintenance and storage? If not then how far out of airworthiness currency is it?
If it's been unmaintained with no controlling CAM for a year of two, especially if it's just been tied down on an airfield somewhere, then it's almost certainly junk anyway - only worth scrapping for parts because the cost of returning it to airworthiness will well exceed the value of the aeroplane.
€0.001 supplied,
PDR