Court Opinion

ID: 9442519
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:50:45.670922+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:07.432937
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Chief Judge
(dissenting in part).
In the first form of the “Gratuity Fund” each member agreed to pay $10 every time another member died, and the members collectively agreed that half the profits of the Exchange should also contribute. The promise to make the $10 payments was like the “premium notes” of old mutual fire insurance companies, in which each member assumed a limited liability for the loss suffered by any one, the result of which was to spread his loss over all. These companies were always considered insurance companies; and insurance is usually regarded as essentially the ratable distribution over all members of a group of a payment which becomes due to some one of them upon a future occasion not predictable in time or in occurrence. The respondent’s argument, as I understand it, is that in the tax statute the word should be limited to conventional life insurance, based upon adequate actuarial bases, and perhaps limited by the exclusion of bad risks. That appears to me must too circumscribed a reading of the phrase: “Insurance of every description.” Back of the statute lies the purpose, I think, to include in a man’s estate whatever provision he may have made for his successors, which depends upon his death, and which he has secured by means of “premiums” or “other considerations,” paid during his life. Such contracts aré a form of saving, and it is of no importance whether they are mutual arrangements, or arm’s length bargains with companies who are in the business. Now that1 the “Gratuity Fund” has become so large that the payments are made out of its income, the similarity to ordinary life insurance has become less; just as it was at the outset so far as concerned the contribution of half the profits of the Exchange. But that did not change the result. When a member buys his seat, he buys an interest in the “Fund,” which is nothing more than security for the obligation which he assumes to pay $15 every time another member dies. True, it has become practically certain that he will never be called upon to pay — the security is large enough; but even though *294we were to take the “Fund” as an absolute discharge of the obligation, I should still call the payment upon his death insurance. The member would be paying a single premium when he bought his seat, because his purchase gives him an interest in the “Fund” which is to be used to meet the payment. I should liken that to a single payment “term” policy, if the “term”— instead of being measured in a fixed number of years — were measured by the period during which the member kept his seat. So far, therefore, I am at one with my brothers.
I would, however, limit the amount to be included in the gross estate to that proportion which the premiums paid after January 10, 1941, bears to all premiums paid while the member had his seat; and by premiums, I mean those successive charges of $15 which were debited against his interest in the “Fund.” That these debits were “premiums,” or at least “other considerations,” follows from what I have already said; and I think that a member has no “incidents of ownership” in the “insurance” while he lives. Nobody has been able to suggest .any such incident except that, if he sells the seat, he sells his interest in the “Fund,” and that this interest will presumably figure in the price that he gets for the seat. I assume as much; indeed,' I can conceive that an old member in bad health might decide not to sell just because of his interest in the “Fund”; or that a young unmarried member, confident of exceptional prospective longevity, might be induced to sell chiefly for the same reason. But we are not dealing with words in vacuo, stripping them of the connotations which their context imposes. I agree that the grantee of a power to sell Whiteacre and Blackacre together, but not separately, has an “incident of ownership” in each; but when we apply that phrase to insurance, it.should take on an insurance meaning, so to speak. I think the phrase covers those policies which the insured has reserved some power to change; it means that he can change the beneficiary; that he can borrow on them; that he can surrender them; that he can influence their, obligation by acts directed to them alone. It does not mean, I submit, that he can affect them by transactions in which they are at best only an incident, and a relatively unimportant one at that. But, however, that might be if we had no more than the bare words, it appears from the House Report that this interpretation is that which Congress had in mind. True, “it is impossible to include an exhaustive list”; but the examples given are all of the kind I mention; they are of powers reserved in the policy; they do not suggest a power which can be exercised only by including an interest of much greater moment. I would include only about one-fourth of $20,000 in the estate.