The Federal First Instance Court’s Fifth Commercial Bench will decide whether it has the jurisdiction to hear the case of United Insurance versus the Addis Abeba Chamber of Commerce & Sectoral Associations (AACCSA) on March 17, 2014. The case is in relation to the AACCSA barring Zafu Eyesuswork, United’s representative, from attending its ninth general assembly on December 19, 2013.
United’s charge, filed at the Federal First Instance Court on December 31, 2013, suggests that the court abrogate the assembly, which it says took place without the necessary quorum. They reject the legitimacy of the AACCSA’s charter – which was amended in 2010 reducing the quorum down to 500, instead of more than half of the 14,000-strong membership (as indicated by Article Nine of Proclamation 341/03) – and request that the court overturns the decision of AACCSA’s board to bar Zafu from all chamber meetings.
The AACCSA submitted a written response to the court, but later, on February 12, requested to amend its response, claiming that it had discovered that the original would jeopardise the Chamber’s survival. The court rejected this request and decided to go ahead.
The court, however, did push the oral litigation back from Monday, March 4, 2014, to the following day because another court was using the only tape recorder available. But it in fact, went ahead without the recorder, which was still not available on Tuesday.
The chamber had argued according to its 2010 charter that any differences among members had to be arbitrated or referred to the Ministry of Trade (MoT), and that the court did not have any jurisdiction. The Chamber later made
an amendment to the claim, stating that it was the Addis Abeba Trade & Industry Bureau, and not the MoT, to which the case would be referred, as the AACCSA is a regional bureau.
United Insurance, however, argued that the charter amended in 2010 had to be discarded, as it was approved in a meeting that did not fulfil the quorum and without receiving a two-thirds majority vote. It also argued, responding to the Chamber’s original defence, that if the case had been the concern of the MoT or the Ministry of Justice(MoJ), these bodies would have responded when problems first occurred.
The largest number of participants the chamber has ever witnessed was in 2010, when the AACCSA extended an invitation to all its members, for the sixth annual meeting, with 860 attending. The plaintiff referred to that meeting on its oral proceeding, saying that the 860 attendants did not fill quorum and that they could not establish the two-thirds majority needed to amend the charter.
After hearing the oral proceedings, the judge adjourned the case until March 17, 2014.
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