Company Meetings, Including Rules of Order

P.F. McKenna was librarian at the Police Academy, Brampton, Ontario.

Mr. Wainberg has produced a third edition of his work on company meetings. A lawyer practising in Ontario, he has based his text upon his own substantial experience of the conduct of meetings in Canada. This edition, a complete revision, includes new rules, new cases, and an enlarged index. Beginning with a glossary of relevant terms, the author then moves through the various aspects of a company meeting from the general to the specific. The text is liberally supplemented with references to relevant case law. The chapters in Part I discuss the rules of order whereby democratic principles are set in motion within the context of a meeting. Among other things this section deals with: notice of meetings, organization of meetings, elections and appointments, motions and resolutions, minutes and proxies. Part II focuses strictly on company meetings and contains a useful number of standard forms applicable to Canadian company meetings.

Two useful aspects of this text are the charts found inside both the front and the back covers of the book. At the front is a listing of motions in order of precedence and a brief indication of some of the main characteristics of these motions. It is to this chart that a novice chairman would turn in order to determine whether or not someone in a meeting could interrupt a speaker with a point of information. Inside the back cover Mr. Wainberg has provided a list of statutory sections relating to meetings. Federal and provincial statutes dealing with company meetings are presented with a breakdown of the sections of those acts applying to specific facets of a meeting.

This book is carefully prepared, clearly laid out, and copiously footnoted with references to significant case law. One point of information raised by the author in his Preface is that the rules for the conduct of meetings of societies, clubs, and associations are not always going to be identical to those which apply to business corporations. Mr. Wainberg has also written a text for that audience!