Sun, 09 Mar 2008

Living the Christmas Conference drops legal actions against General Anthroposophical Society

DORNACH (NNA) – The members of the Living the Christmas Conference grouping, who were expelled from the General Anthroposophical Society (GAS) at its annual general meeting in March last year on the grounds that their constant negative campaigning against the GAS had begun to sap the society’s strength, have dropped their legal action to have their membership reinstated.

The plaintiffs also withdrew their challenge to the resolution adopted by the AGM which declared membership of Living the Christmas Conference to be incompatible with membership of the GAS.

A third action, an appeal by the group against a ruling of the Dorneck-Thierstein district court which had rejected the group’s challenge of the legitimacy of the resolutions adopted at the GAS extraordinary general meeting in April 2006, was also abandoned.

In this third action the group had wanted to make the GAS executive council personally liable for the 800,000 Swiss franc court costs associated with the successful legal challenge mounted by Living the Christmas Conference with regard to the dispute over the existence of the Anthroposophical Society re-founded by Rudolf Steiner at Christmas 1923 and its fusion with the present GAS.

This means that all the legal proceedings initiated by Living the Christmas Conference and its members against the GAS have been dropped.

“The withdrawal of the appeal and the three lawsuits means that these proceedings have been discontinued. As a result there are no further issues with regard to the legality of the AGM resolutions of 2006. The same applies to the resolution of 31 March 2007 and the expulsion of the 44 Living the Christmas Conference members from the Anthroposophical Society,” the GAS said in a press release on Sunday.

Before finally abandoning its cases, Living the Christmas Conference had offered the GAS a settlement in which both parties would pay their own legal costs and divide court costs equally between one another, an offer which was rejected by the GAS. The court and the plaintiffs had been informed of the reasons in detail, the GAS said.

The appeal and district courts will now have to decide on how costs are divided, but the GAS said in its press release that according to the procedural code a plaintiff who withdraws from a case has to bear most of the costs.

Commenting in a statement on the Living the Christmas Conference website on their decision to give up their action, the expelled members said that a key factor had been that the financial risk of continuing had become too great.

“By abandoning the recourse to legal proceedings and with our current path of self-questioning and searching we combine the hope that perhaps it might become possible again in the future to work together with the members of the General Anthropsophical Society,” the statement added in conclusion.

END/nna/cva

Item: 080309-02EN Date: 9 March 2008

Copyright 2008 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/

Street poet acquitted of illegal street trading

LONDON (NNA) – The lyric poet Paul Ursell, who for eight years has recited his poetry at the South Bank in London under his artist’s name Joseph Marinus, has had charges against him of reciting poetry for commercial gain thrown out by a judge.

Ursell, whose work is influenced by the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner and who also wrote poems for anyone who came to him and asked for help and advice, had fallen foul of a zero tolerance policy which has made it increasingly difficult for street artists and buskers in London to perform their art.

After having been temporarily arrested in April last year by police for “illegal street trading” for performing his art without a street trading licence and having his handwritten poems and tools of his trade confiscated, friends of Ursell said a “helpful” judge acquitted him of all charges just before Christmas. His poems and materials had also been returned to him.

If the prosecution had been successful, all Ursell’s poems and materials would have been destroyed.

END/nna/cva

Item: 080309-01EN Date: 9 March 2008

Copyright 2008 News Network Anthroposophy Limited. All rights reserved. See: www.nna-news.org/copyright/

More NNA reports at: www.nna-news.org/en/