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Comment by Vaslo | Hacker News Reader

Tell me that you don’t seriously believe this actually happened lol

Yup it all happened, I don't think we ever took them to court, we did call one of the 6 weekly followups (it was 6 weeks because the company had to hold a meeting 6 weeks after being notified that 100 shareholders wanted a meeting).

I may not have explained just how red the chair's face went when we moved that motion (there is no "1873 Aged and Infirm person's Act", it was made up for the purpose, we didn't really need a reason to move a motion of no confidence in the chair) - we had all gone in with flowcharts of how we were going to do it written down on paper.

It all happened in the aftermath of the 1981 rugby tour

https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour

(having said this it was 40 years ago, I may have gotten some minor details wrong - it was however a grand social hack)

How did you manage to buy shares in local companies so easily, in 1981? What companies were these?

This was in NZ, probably more '82 or '83 - I can't remember the company name, they were based in Christchurch (or at least the AGM was there) - I had my lawyer buy them for me, had to buy a 100 unit packet for ~$100 which was worth a lot more back then, I'd bought a (very!) small cottage by the sea for $8.5k a few years before.

I may not have explained just how red the chair's face went when we moved that motion (there is no "1873 Aged and Infirm person's Act", it was made up for the purpose

Well, wait, doesn't that make the whole exercise fraudulent? Here in the US at least, this tactic would only work once. You'd be faced with charges of disorderly conduct or trespassing the next time you tried citing a nonexistent law, whether you held shares in the company or not.

You might as well just skip the CS theory and call in a bomb threat every time they try to hold a meeting.

The second half of the sentence that you stopped short of quoting in full explains that no reason is required for a motion of no confidence. It was added solely as a prod.

Yeah, I keep forgetting how judges in civil suits, such as the one that would inevitably follow shenanigans like this, are easy to fool by citing technicalities, especially ones that don't exist or that "aren't necessary." My bad.

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