Allens says the NSW Law Society is on firm ground in moving to dump a member of its executive … Demand for procedural fairness … Motion to sack on hold until injunction resolved 

Last week the society’s executive called a special council meeting to remove Coralie Kenny from the position of junior vice president. 

The council did not provide her with reasons for the resolution to sack her from the executive. She raced to the Supreme Court and was granted an interim ex parte injunction. 

The injunction was extended last Friday (July 7) and will get a full hearing at the end of the month. 

The executive of the society consists of the president Pauline Wright; the senior vice Doug Humphreys from the Veterans Review Board; junior vice Coralie Kenny who lists her business address at Suncorp Staff Pty Ltd; Richard Harvey treasurer, a Mosman solicitor; and Gary Ulman, the immediate past president and a former Minter Ellison partner. 

For reasons yet unexplained, some of those members want to see the back of Coralie. Other members of the council were unaware of the executive’s move until they were notified of the special council meeting for July 7. 

This is Kenny’s second year on the executive having previously been the society’s treasurer. She is scheduled to take two overseas trips this year on behalf of the Law Society, one to a LawAsia chinwag in Japan.  

She has hired Alan Blanch from Hicksons in the show-down with the society. Blanch is better known as the Bar ‘n Grill’s man in disciplinary cases, but here he has advised her that that the society’s council should show procedural fairness and that reasons for her removal from the executive be explained. 

One member of the society has suggested that all councillors write their views and complaints about Kenny, which would then be presented collectively to her lawyer. 

The society’s solicitors at Allans have advised that as a voluntary association the council is on strong grounds if it decides to remove someone from its executive and that the position advanced by Kenny’s lawyers is “novel” and doomed to fail. 

Last week Justice Monika Schmidt asked, “can’t you settle this”? It may well be resolved because it is unattractive for the solicitors’ union to be washing dirty linen in public.