LEGAL PHASES OF COOPERATIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 55 
return of income or any further showing with respect to its status under the 
law, unless it changes the character of its organization or operations or the 
purpose for which it was originally created. Collectors will keep a list of all 
exempt corporations, to the end that they may occasionally inquire into their 
status and ascertain whether or not they are observing the conditions upon 
which their exemption is predicated. 
In compliance with the section just quoted all associations should 
submit their cases to the collector of internal revenue for the dis- 
trict in which they are located in order that their claim for an ex- 
emption may be passed upon. 
UNINCORPORATED ASSOCIATIONS. 
Inasmuch as some cooperative associations are unincorporated, a 
discussion of the legal status of such associations and the rights and 
liabilities of their members is in order. Such an association may be 
defined to be a body of persons acting together without a charter 
but employing to a greater or less extent the forms and methods used 
by incorporated bodies for the prosecution of the object for which 
formed.** 
DIFFER FROM PARTNERSHIPS OR CORPORATIONS. 
The liability of members of an unincorporated association to third 
persons is frequently the same as that of partners, but this is not 
always true. In the absence of a statutory or contractual provision 
on the subject the death or withdrawal of a member does not dissolve 
the association.*> A partnership, on the contrary, under such cir- 
cumstances is dissolved by the death or withdrawal of a member.*® 
Again, a corporation may sue or be sued in its own name, while at 
common law, and in the absence of a statute, an unincorporated as- 
sociation can not maintain an action in its own name but must sue in 
the names of all the members composing it, however numerous they 
may be.*? Likewise, such an association in the absence of a statute 
can not be sued in its society name, but the individual members must 
be sued.°§ A corporation may take title to property in its own 
name, but an unincorporated association in the absence of a statute 
is ordinarily incapable as an organization of taking or holding either 
real or personal property in its name.*® 
On meee a 
5} Burke v. Roper, 79 Ala. 138; Lindermann, etc. Co. v. Stone Works, 170 Ill. A. 4238; 
Hossack v. Dev. Assoc., 244 Ill. 274, 91 N. E. 439. 
56 Scholefield v. Eichelberger, 7 Pet. 586. 
S7St. Paul Typothete v. St. Paul Bookbinders’ Union No. 37, 94 Minn. 351, 102 
NeeVWic ba: 
58 Allis-Chalmers Co. v. Iron Moulders’ Union, 150 Fed. 155. 
5° Philadelphia Baptist Ass’n. v. Hart, 4 Wheat. 1, 4 L. ed. 499. 
