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The estimated 1,200 members of the Bermuda Workers Cooperative Society were asked to arrive at a meeting last week with $1,200 to pay off debts of $1.4 million owed by the organisation to creditors.

The debts were racked up from the operation of the Co-Op Supermarket which closed for business at its Court Street location in October last year.

In a letter dated April 30 to the shareholders Society President Victor Fishington asked members to bring "cheque or cash'' to the meeting. Neither Mr. Fishington nor the organisation's lawyer Delroy Duncan returned telephone calls yesterday.

Mr. Fishington called the meeting for May 19 at the Bermuda Industrial Union headquarters.

"Your Directors, along with the Society's lawyer, with your best interest in mind, have been diligently working at trying to keep the Creditors' lawyers away from your personal assets,'' he stated in the letter. "This has been accomplished so far by meeting each challenge from their lawyers by submitting to the Court Affidavits and Summons in defence on behalf of all Shareholders.'' He stated that the directors have been covering the costs of the legal proceedings so far but are "not in the financial position to continue covering these fees at random''.

The organisation lost a court battle in April to get the Registrar of Companies appointed as the Official Receiver to oversee the supermarket's liquidation.

Then Supreme Court Judge Justice Richard Ground ruled the organisation was an unregistered association and so did not fall under the Companies Act as a limited liability company. He then discharged the Registrar of Companies from having to oversee the winding up of the Society as determined in an order made in January by Chief Justice Austin Ward.

The ruling left the organisation and its creditors in limbo as to how to proceed in settling the liquidation.

Justice Ground suggested that the Society's directors, the membership and the creditors should get together and settle the matter.

Mr. Fishington told members in his letter that they should pay up because they were liable for the supermarket's debts.

"As shareholders of the BWCS we need your financial commitment of a minimum amount of $1200 from each shareholder to pay off the creditors and the ongoing debts of the BWCS,'' he stated. "We are all liable for the debts as explained in previous meetings and your commitment will help us to resolve the Society's outstanding liabilities of $1.4 million owed to our creditors.'' However in an aside to his ruling in April Justice Grounds expressed doubts about whether the members would incur any such liability.

Justice Ground said the winding up order made in January gives "modest powers'' to the receiver which are "limited to getting in the assets, and in that respect I doubt, without deciding, that any liabilities of the individual members to the creditors can be considered as assets of the Society at all.'' His decision left creditors of the companies the prospect of attempting to collect the debts themselves from the consumer cooperative. Since the supermarket folded with assets of only about $18,000 and liabilities of $1.4 million, some of the lawyers involved had argued creditors might be forced to collect money from the 1,200 members of the Society.

In arguments made before the court lawyers for the Society and the creditors held out a scenario of hundreds of lawsuits and court cases against the members as a result.

The largest creditor of the supermarket is The Bermuda Industrial Union (BIU) which lent the supermarket $330,000. The supermarket also owes the BIU about $94,600 for rent, and $58,300 for purchases from the union's gas station for a total debt of about $483,000.

The cooperative owes another $105,900 in taxes and $40,300 in social insurance payments to the Government. Wholesalers BDC Ltd., Butterfield & Vallis, and Winter-Cookson, Petty are owed another $350,000.

What BWCS members were told The following are extracts from a letter to members of the Bermuda Workers Cooperative Society by their President Victor Fishington `Your Directors, along with the Society's lawyer, with your best interest in mind, have been diligently working at trying to keep the Creditors' lawyers away from your personal assets' *** `As shareholders of the BWCS we need your financial commitment of a minimum amount of $1,200 from each shareholder to pay off the creditors and the ongoing debts of the BWCS.' COURTS CTS