TERMS OF USE

I.Acceptance

By visiting these pages or submitting an application, a visitor accepts these terms as written. Where a visitor does not accept them, the appropriate course is to leave the site.

II.Membership and Application

An application is an invitation to be considered and confers no right of admission. The Court may decline any application at its discretion and is under no obligation to give reasons. Before offering a place, the Court may look into an applicant’s name, take references, and consult public records, and an applicant is told when that is being done. What is learned is used for the decision and not kept afterwards.

III.Standing and Withdrawal

1. 1

   A membership is a revocable licence to attend the Court’s engagements. It is personal to the member, is not transferable, confers no ownership or interest in the Court or its property, and carries no vote in its affairs.

2. 2

   The Court may withdraw a membership where a member has broken the Code, has brought the Court or its members into disrepute, has given false particulars in an application, has failed to pay a sum owed, or has conducted themselves in a manner the Committee judges incompatible with the company of the Court.

3. 3

   Before a membership is withdrawn the member is written to, told what is at issue, and given fourteen days to reply. The Committee considers the reply and decides. The decision is final, and no appeal lies from it.

4. 4

   Where conduct is such that the Court cannot wait, a membership may be suspended while the matter is considered.

5. 5

   A member may resign at any time by writing to the Secretary.

6. 6

   Save under the founders’ guarantee, by which a founding fee is returned in full on request should the Founding Dinner not be held by 31 March 2027, no fee, due or sum paid to the Court is returned on resignation or withdrawal, in whole or in part. Where a founding place is withdrawn or resigned, the exemption from dues attached to it ends with the membership and does not survive it.

7. 7

   A membership that has been withdrawn is not offered again.

IV.Conduct and Discretion

Members and guests are asked to hold the affairs of the Court in confidence. The Court photographs and films its engagements and owns those photographs and recordings outright. The Parlour Evenings are the exception: they are never photographed or recorded. By taking part, members and their guests consent to the Court’s use of their name, likeness and image as they appear in them, in any medium, in private or in public, including the Court’s publications, the press, and its advertising and promotion. Members and guests do not photograph other members, or publish their names, without the Committee’s leave.

V.Dues and Fees

Dues, fees and charges are set by the Court and may be changed. A change to annual dues is given in writing at least sixty days before the 1 January on which they fall due; a member who does not accept it may resign before that date and owes no further dues.

Where an engagement a member has paid for is cancelled, or is postponed or moved and the member does not attend it as changed: if the reason is within the Court’s reasonable control, the Court returns in full whatever the member paid for it; if the reason is beyond the Court’s reasonable control, the Court returns what it can recover from the host, the venue, the carrier or any supplier, and no more.

A member who withdraws from an engagement they have paid for more than fourteen days before it begins receives back what the Court can recover from the host, the venue, the carrier or any supplier, and no more. A member who withdraws fourteen days or fewer before it begins receives nothing back.

Disputed charges. A member who questions a charge writes first to the Secretary, who answers within fourteen days. Nothing in these terms limits a member’s rights under the law or with their card issuer. Where a member disputes a charge with their card issuer and the dispute is decided in the Court’s favour, the sum remains owed, the member also pays the fees the Court was charged for the dispute, and a sum withheld in this way is treated as unpaid under clause III.2.

VI.Arrangements

An arrangement is the Court’s work for one member, and the one guest travelling with them, on one engagement in the year’s season that the Court does not host: the passage, the travel there and back, the rooms, the table and whatever else belongs to that engagement, from the day before it begins to the day after it ends. However many bookings it takes, it is one arrangement. Five arrangements come with membership each year, counted from 1 January to 31 December. They are not carried over or passed to another, and never include the cost of what is booked, which the member pays. Each arrangement beyond the fifth is $150. Engagements the Court hosts count against none. Anything else a member asks the Court to arrange, an engagement no longer in the season or an occasion outside it, is never one of the five; the Court may take it on at a sum it states beforehand, or decline it. The number of arrangements that come with membership, and the fee for those beyond it, are set by the Court for each year and may be changed by written notice given at least sixty days before the year in which the change applies; a founding member’s arrangements will not fall below three a year. Where the Court cannot secure what was asked, the request is not counted among the five and no arrangement fee is charged for it.

The Court arranges through partners it has chosen, and those partners may compensate the Court for business arranged on a member’s behalf. Where a partner pays the Court for an arrangement, the member is told before anything is committed. The Court chooses a partner on the member’s interest and not on the fee.

VII.The Founding Place

A founding place carries an exemption from annual dues for as long as it is held. The exemption is from dues alone; arrangements, fees and charges for a founding member are as the Terms in force set them.

VIII.Intellectual Property

The arms, the name, the calendar, and the text of this site belong to the Court and may not be reproduced without written permission.

IX.Changes to These Terms

The Court may amend these Terms by written notice to members. A change takes effect sixty days after notice and applies to what is requested after that date.

X.Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York, and any dispute is to be heard in the courts of that State.

This site is kept by The Mansa Court LLC, a New York limited liability company, whose address for correspondence is 54 State Street, Suite 804 #18002, Albany, New York 12207.