An unknown number of the Council members of the Law Society are insured with the SMDF. They are, consequently, members of the SMDF. Although unknown, the number must be large because they chose as their spokesman a person who is a member of the SMDF.
As Council members they owe a fiduciary duty to avoid a conflict between their duties to the Law Society and its members and their own interests. This, it seems, is the reason they sought to get agreement for the SMDF bailout plan at an EGM of the members of the Law Society. They have persuaded themselves that, in refraining from casting votes in the Council on the plan, they are nonetheless free to apply the resources of the Law Society to benefit themselves by procuring a “yes” vote in the poll on the bailout.
They find it inconceivable that the SMDF problem should be considered their problem alone. To the suggestion that the SMDF members bailout the SMDF by cash injection from their own resources, the spokesman says:
“The chances of SMDF members voluntarily contributing to a bailout are “very slim””
This is chutzpah by the bucketful. It also overlooks the fact that circumstances have not left SMDF members with a choice in the matter; either they fund the bailout or they manipulate a bailout by the Law Society.
“Chutzpah” in Yiddish has been defined as:
“that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”