Court Opinion

ID: 9422010
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:00:53.576425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:33.960388
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
concurring.
While I join the opinion of my Brother Brennan, my view of the merits is so divergent from the rest that a word of explanation is needed. Bogardus v. Commissioner, 302 U. S. 34, 41, in holding payments by stock*326holders to employees were, on the facts there present, gifts, said:
“There is entirely lacking the constraining force of any moral or legal duty as well as the incentive of anticipated benefit of any kind beyond the satisfaction which flows from the performance of a generous act.”
Had a motion for a directed verdict been made by respondent at the close of the evidence, I think with all deference that it should have been granted, since my idea of a “gift” within the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code is a much broader concept than that of my Brethren. As the opinion of the Court points out, this striker (who became a union member without solicitation several months after he began receiving benefits) had no legal or moral duty to picket or to do any other act in furtherance of the strike. There is no evidence that the union made these payments to keep this striker in line. It is said that these strike payments serve the union's cause in promoting the strike. Yet the whole setting of the case indicates to me these payments were welfare, plain and simple. Unions, like employers, may have charitable impulses and incentives. Here only the needy got the relief.* Yet since *327(so far as the present record shows) respondent acquiesced in the submission to the jury, the United States received more favored consideration than it could claim as of right.

 An administrative letter from the national union to the local unions dated March 6, 1952, states in part:
“The handling of the emergency health and welfare problems of our members and their families is one of the most important tasks facing our Union during strike periods. We should do everything possible to minimize the hardship of our members and their families during strike periods by using the resources of the community and our Union.
“The International Union, UAW-CIO, has established a Community Services Program in order to assist our members in making full use of community services. These health and welfare agencies have, been organized in the community to render services, including financial assistance, medical, hospital and nursing care, legal aid, unemployment compensation (in New York State), family and child *327care and other such services. These services can be used by our members during strike periods as well as in lay-off periods. Our members support and pay for such services through taxes for Federal, state and local public agencies and through contributions for voluntary community agencies.

“. . . Emergency strike assistance may be given to strikers who cannot meet their minimum needs with their own individual resources, who cannot qualify for such assistance from community agencies. Local Unions requiring strike assistance from the International Union must make their application for assistance to their Regional Director.”
The parties stipulated to the following:
“. . . The International Union grants strike benefits to non-members of the Union, who participate in a strike, if they do not have sufficient income to purchase food or to meet an emergency situation. The Union treats such non-members on the same basis as members of the Union, but non-members as well as members must be strikers before they may receive assistance from the Union.
“In order to obtain strike benefits from the Union, each applicant must appear before a Union Counsellor who asks him a series of questions which are contained on a printed Counselling form.

“. . . The Union makes a distinction between applicants in granting strike benefits to them, depending on their marital status and number of dependents. At the time the Kohler strike aid program began, a single person received a food voucher for $6.00 per week; a married couple without dependents received a food voucher for $10.00 a week; a married couple with two children, a food voucher for $13.85 a week. On June 28, 1954, the Union increased the amount of aid to the people on the Kohler strike: aid for a single person was increased to $7.50 a week; for a married couple without dependents aid was increased to $15.00 a week; aid for a married couple with one child was increased to $18.00 a week.”