RSA taking legal action against Crows

The beleaguered New Plymouth and Districts RSA is allegedly taking legal action in an attempt to break the contract that sold its clubrooms to Steve and David Crow.

But Steve Crow told the Taranaki Daily News last night that he and his brother intend to fight the move.

"We got a lawyer's letter about a week ago.

"They have purported to cancel their lease and cancel the buy back contract and it's now with the lawyers."

Mr Crow believes the legal action is led by the RSA's executive and does not have the support of the membership.

He said he, and not the executive, had informed about 150 members of the action at a special meeting at St Joseph's hall in New Plymouth on Saturday morning.

"I stood up and told them this was happening.

"Sadly, it's not the membership that wants it. From what we saw at the meeting we had a hell of a lot of support and people were asking very hard questions of the executive as to, `why the hell are you doing this?' and they really didn't get an answer.

"It's just stupidity," he said.

"Our lawyers reckon it would cost a quarter of a million dollars to defend and three to four years to fight."

The Crows did not believe there were any grounds for the civil action and that they had not breached the agreement.

The brothers had already paid the RSA the required deposit, in total a cash payment of about $612,000, and have a mortgage of $1.52 million, which is not due for three years. "We will definitely fight it. We have already appointed a barrister."

New Plymouth RSA spokesman Dean Esaiah had not responded to questions put to him by the Taranaki Daily News by press time last night.

The Crows signed a deal with the RSA to buy the Strandon clubrooms for $1.9 million in July 2008 as part of a rescue package for the cash-strapped club.

A majority of club members voted to sell the property to the brothers who plan to put a $20 million development on the site on the promise it got cash to clear debts and improve facilities.

Since then the national RSA has closed the club amidst revelations that the New Plymouth branch owes its welfare fund $736,000 it had borrowed to stay afloat.

- © Fairfax NZ News