Seoul Civil Attorney | Recovering the Down Payment Through a Lawsuit to Confirm Non-Existence of Union Member Status

A lawsuit to confirm the non-existence of union member status is a lawsuit that confirms whether a person holds the legal status of a union member.

Such a lawsuit is generally brought when a person wishes to be found not to be a union member as a matter of law.

It is typically brought in situations such as problems with unqualified members, title-trust issues, and improper procedures.

In the client's case, he had entered into a 🔗regional housing association membership contract but wished to withdraw from the regional housing association due to the defendant's deceptive conduct.

A regional housing association is a project in which owners of small homes and persons without homes who reside in the same special city, metropolitan city, city, or county establish an association under the Housing Act, secure land in a specific area, and build apartments.

A distinctive feature of regional housing is that the apartments are built by the association members as the principal parties, rather than by the state or a large construction company.

The members lead the entire process directly, from land acquisition, member recruitment, project approval, and construction contracts through to occupancy.

Regional housing has the feature of a lower purchase price compared with general sale, and because it does not require a subscription savings account as general sale does, it is free from such regulation.

While regional housing has the advantage of lower cost, it also carries disadvantages such as difficulty securing land, the possibility of additional contributions, and difficulty withdrawing from the association.

If a problem arises after joining a regional housing association, a member must find a way to withdraw or to obtain a refund of the down payment.

The option available in that situation is to remove the member's qualification through a lawsuit to confirm the non-existence of union member status.

The member obtains legal confirmation that he does not assert the status of a member with respect to the association, leaving the member qualification behind.

In general, grounds on which withdrawal from an association may be sought include the following: a change in the project plan from what was presented at the time of recruitment, difficulty in carrying out the project due to insufficient contributions, and the occurrence of corruption or disputes within the association.

The Seoul civil attorney argued that the defendant had repeatedly reversed the project plan it had explained at the time of recruitment.

In recruiting members for this association, the defendant stated in the recruitment notice “a total of 600 households (planned) out of a total of 700 households to be recruited,” and the plaintiff and the members agreed to this project plan and entered into this contract, with the client paying the down payment to the defendant.

The defendant, however, abruptly gave notice that it would reduce the total number of households to 650, and afterward announced that it would change the planned number of project households to 300.

Beyond such changes, the defendant also caused the members to live in anxiety by, among other things, expelling board members who voiced opinions opposing its own amid conflicts with the members of the emergency response committee.

The Seoul civil attorney emphasized that the project plan at the time of the contract differed from the current project plan and that the defendant had handled these decisions unilaterally, and argued that the member status was void.

The Seoul civil attorney asserted a right of rescission of the contract under Article 546 of the Civil Act.

Article 546 of the Civil Act provides that where performance becomes impossible due to a cause attributable to the obligor, the obligee may rescind the contract.

Here, impossibility of performance of an obligation refers not merely to a case that is absolutely or physically impossible, but to a case in which, in light of the rules of experience in social life or commercial common practice, the obligee cannot expect the obligor to realize performance.

The Seoul civil attorney argued, as evidence, that the defendant had changed the plan to a number of households that did not even reach half of what it had promised at the outset of this association contract, and had given unilateral notice to the plaintiff and the other members.

The Seoul civil attorney emphasized that the defendant had significantly altered the contents of this contract, and that, because the total number of households supplied was a matter of great importance to the contracting parties, the contents of the contract had in effect reached a state of impossibility of performance due to a cause attributable to the defendant.