The legal personality of a corporation is different from the personality of the individual members who constitute the corporation, and the implied bar to the cognizance of disputes between a past member and the Co-operative Society by the Civil Courts under Section 60 and Section 61 of the Travancore-Cochin Co-operative Societies Act, 1951.

1. The plaintiff, whose suit for recovery of certain sums from a co-operative society has been dismissed by both the courts below, is the appellant in this Second Appeal. It is admitted that the plaintiff was a member of the Cooperative Society. Plaintiff stated that he had advanced certain loans to the Society before he became a member of the society and that he was in the employ of the Society for over three years for remuneration promised, and that, on account of all these, amounts are due to him besides what he has remitted as share value to the Society. He has filed this suit for settlement of accounts and recovery of the amounts that may be found due from the Co-operative Society. The learned Munsiff held that since the plaintiff is a past member of the Cooperative Society the suit is barred by S.60 of the Travancore-Cochin Co-operative Societies Act, 1951. When the matter was taken in appeal, the learned Subordinate judge upheld the Munsiff. Hence this Second Appeal by the plaintiff.

2. There is one vital defect in the frame of this suit, viz., that the Cooperative Society against whom the claim is made, has not been made a defendant in the suit. The learned counsel for the appellant contended that the members of the managing committee of the Co-operative Society have been impleaded as defendants and as such the Society is adequately represented in this suit, and relied on Radha Lal v. East Indian Railway Co. Ltd. (ILR. 5 Patna 128) in support. There the defendant was described as "Agent of the East Indian Railway Co.". The learned judges held that the suit being against a Railway Company the proper name under which the company should have been sued was the name and style under which the company carried on its business; though the plaintiffs had not chosen to describe so in the plaint, they had in their application for issue of process described the defendant as the East Indian Railway Company and the Company itself entered appearance and contested the suit; and that in such circumstances the Company was understood by all concerned as the real defendant in the case, and allowed the suit to be proceeded with accordingly. In this case it is not even averred in the plaint that the defendants have been impleaded as representatives of the Co-operative Society. In the cause-title of the plaint, only the personal addresses of the individual members of the managing committee of the Society have been given.

3. S.24 of the Travancore-Cochin Co-operative Societies Act, 1951 enunciates:

"The registration of a society shall render it a body corporate by the name under which it is registered with perpetual succession and a common seal, and with power to hold property, to enter into contracts, to institute and defend suits and other legal proceedings and to do all things necessary for the purposes for which it was constituted."

It follows therefore that the Co-operative Society registered under the Act is a Corporation. It has a legal personality. It has to be sued in its corporate name only. It is an elementary proposition of jurisprudence that the legal personality of a corporation is different from the personality of the individual members who constitute the corporation. In Salmond on jurisprudence, 11th Edition, at page 360, it is observed:

"A corporation aggregate is an incorporated group of co-existing persons, and a corporation sole is an incorporated series of successive persons

It is essential to rerognise clearly that in neither of these forms of incorporation is the legal person identical with any single human being. A company is in law something different from its shareholders or members. The property of the company is not in law the properly of the share-holders. The debts and liabilities of the company are not attributed in law to its members. The company may become insolvent, while its members remain rich. Contracts may he made between the company and a shareholder, as if between two persons entirely distinct fro