Court Opinion

ID: 9637944
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:27:17.765967+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:02.033458
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
That appellee was an employee of Duval county as to the regular routine work cov*54ered by and performed under tbe resolution of tbe board of county commissioners fixing tbe salary of the county attorney, and that his regular monthly compensation for the duties of such employment was exempt from taxation as moneys received as such employee, I think there can be no doubt.
In law the word “employee” is chameleon-like; it takes color and meaning not only from the words with which it is associated, but from the subject-matter with which the statute or order in which it is found is concerned. 15 Cyc. 1032, 1033; Campfield v. Lang (C. C.) 25 F. 128; Millers’ Indemnity Underwriters v. Cook (Tex. Civ. App.) 229 S. W. 598; Gay v. Hudson River (C. C.) 178 F. 499, 500; Gurney v. Atl. Ry. Co., 58 N. Y. 358; Latta v. Lonsdale (C. C. A.) 107 F. 585, 52 L. R. A. 479.
While it is true that it is most often used of those employed in less important positions in contradistinction to officers, managers, superintendents etc., it is also true that where the purpose of the statute under investigation requires it, it has a fuller and broader meaning, and will include persons employed in practically every grade, so that the nature of the work performed is no longer a distinguishing mark of an employee. Shields v. Grace, 91 Or. 187, 179 P. 265, 270; Smith v. Bowersock, 95 Kan. 96, 147 P. 1118, 1121; Clark v. New England Tel. Co., 231 Mass. 546, 121 N. E. 497; Burnap v. U. S., 252 U. S. 518, 40 S. Ct. 374, 64 L. Ed. 692.
For at common law, and unless controlled by the context, the subject-matter or the purpose of the statute, whether one who works or performs service for another is an employee is not determined by the rank or importance of the position which he holds, or the character of service rendered, and the term many include attorneys, physicians, etc., whether privately or publicly employed. Gurney v. Atlantic Ry. Co., 58 N. Y. 358; Cyc. 15, p. 1032-1033; Fisher v. City of Mechanicville, 225 N. Y. 210, 121 N. E. 764, 765 (attorney employed by a village on a small yearly salary).
Nor does the question whether one is an employee or a contractor depend upon the nature of the work performed, or the character of the person performing it; rather it is determined by the conditions under which the work is performed; that is, whether it has regularity and continuity, and is performed under the control and direction, though general, of the employer. If the employment .is for a single act, or for a series of isolated acts the employment being specific as to each act, the person employed, whether an attorney in legal matters or a layman in others, is not an employee, but an independent contractor. Hand v. Cook, 29 Nev. 518, 92 P. 3; Clark v. Renninger, 89 Md. 66, 42 A. 928, 44 L. R. A. 413; Louisville, E. & St. L. R. Co. v. Wilson, 138 U. S. 505, 11 S. Ct. 405, 407, 34 L. Ed. 1023.
Perhaps the best statement of the distinction is found in the Wilson Case, supra, where it is said: “The terms ‘officers’ and ‘employees’ both alike refer to those in regular and continual service. Within the ordinary acceptation of the terms, one who is engaged to render service in a particular transaction is neither an officer nor an employee. They imply continuity of service, and exclude those employed for a special and single transaction.”
The facts established and found in this ease are that appellee was both regularly and continuously employed, and that this work was performed by him under the general direction and control of his employer, the board of county commissioners. Vane v. Newcombe, 132 U. S. 233, 10 S. Ct. 60, 33 L. Ed. 310; R. R. v. Wilson, 138 U. S. 505, 11 S. Ct. 405, 34 L. Ed. 1023.
There is some insistence by the govern-' ment upon the authority of Blair v. Byers (C. C. A.) 35 F.(2d) 326, Kreipke v. Commissioner (C. C. A.) 32 F.(2d) 594, 596, and Burnet v. McDonough (8 C. C. A.) 46 F.(2d) 944, that since -appellee was employed as an attorney to do work in which he was specially skilled, and in regard to the manner and method of the performance of which he must have been left to his own devices, and because his full time was not taken up by the county employment, and continuing his private office he was allowed to and did have other clients, it must be held that he was not an employee, because not a full-time one, and because not subject to direction and control as to the details of the work to he performed.
Upon the first point I think it plain that since nowhere in the statute authorizing the deduction of compensation received as an employee of the state or its subdivisions is there any requirement that an employee shall give his full time, that whether he gives his full time or not has no legal and little evidentiary significance as a test. But if it has any, appellee has satisfied it here, for he was obligated to the county to give all the time necessary to accomplish the tasks which they required of him, and could take *55no other business except in spare time, and he did in fact give 75% of his time to the county. Maryland Casualty Co. v. Kent (Tex. Com. App.) 3 S.W.(2d) 414; R. R. Co. v. Hanning, 15 Wall. 656, 21 L. Ed. 220.
Upon the second point, the test of control, it is perfectly plain that it is satisfied in the matter of the services of a professional character rendered by lawyers and physicians, by a general employment to perform the work of the state or county as it comes up in the way and manner which the professional skill of the employee dictates to him; and that if the test of control as applied to the employment of professional men having particular skill, like lawyers, demands more than that control which is implied from the relation of employer and employee created by a contract of employment for regular and continuing services on a monthly salary, it must be rejected..
However, in this case, the test of control is satisfied in the strictest-way by the stipulation and the findings that “during the entire period of employment plaintiff was continuously under the direction and control of the County Commissioners.”
As to that part of the compensation paid appellee over and above his salary under the last paragraph of the resolution: “Said salary shall not cover representation in litigated cases nor work necessarily done in connection with the issuing of county bonds, payment for all such representation and work not covered by salary as above mentioned to be made at a reasonable price to be agreed upon between the Board of County Commissioners and its ,said attorney,” I think the matter stands differently; that such payments were not received by appellee as an employee, but as an agent of the county; and that he is not entitled to deduct as an employee of the county the sums so received.
There is much to be said for the view expressed in the majority opinion that though these sums were not paid in a regular and continuous way, but accrued to him from isolated transactions having no sequential connection with each other, all of them flowed to him as a result and as part of his contract and status as employee. That they represented not sums paid upon individual and separate contracts, but upon the one contract of employment, and as part of the general compensation therein provided for, the only matters not fixed by that contract being not the employment, but the compensation for it, which was to be fixed and measured as the necessity for the rendition of the services arose. That it is not essential to the relation of employee that payment be made on a regular basis. Maryland Casualty Co. v. Kent (Tex. Com. App.) 3 S.W. (2d) 414; R. R. Co. v. Hanning, 15 Wall. 649, 21 L. Ed. 220; Shannon v. Western Indem. Co. (Tex. Com. App.) 257 S. W. 522.
With the principle announced I fully agree, and it is only because I do not so interpret the contract that I find myself unable to .agree to its application here. It seems to me that the contract had only the effect to exclude from the duties which plaintiff as an employee assumed those special matters referred to in it as excluded, and that these matters were made the subject of special agreements from time to time as they arose.
It does not follow, however, that the moneys so received were taxable. On the contrary, I think it perfectly plain that these sums are no more taxable than those received by him as employee, for they, just as the sums which he got by way of monthly salary, were paid to and received by him as an agency of the board of county commissioners for discharging for them their general duties imposed by the statutes of Florida, and taxation imposed upon sums so received would be “to affect a governmental agency in such manner -as directly to interfere with the functions of government.” Metcalf & Eddy v. Mitchell, 269 U. S. 514, 46 S. Ct. 172, 70 L. Ed. 384; Blair v. Mathews (C. C. A.) 29 F.(2d) 892, 894; Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi, 277 U. S. 218, 48 S. Ct. 451, 72 L. Ed. 857, 56 A. L. R. 583.
The statutes of Florida in force at the time appellee was employed provided, section 2153, Compiled General Laws of Florida 1927, under “Powers and duties,” that: “The board of county commissioners of each county shall have power, at any legal meeting, to elect one of their number chairman, and to make such orders concerning the care of and the improvement of the corporate property of the county as may be deemed expedient, and also * * * To represent the county in the prosecution and defense of all legal causes. * * * To issue bonds in their respective counties [etc.] *^ * * To perform all other acts and duties that may be authorized by law.”
Under these statutes the Supreme Court of Florida has held: (1) That in the absence of fraud the county commissioners have wide discretion in exercising the authority conferred on them by statute, Bowden v. Ricker, 70 Fla. 154, 69 So. 694; (2) county *56commissioners are constitutional officers, and their powers and duties have been fixed and-prescribed by the Legislature, State v. Walton County, 93 Fla. 796, 112 So. 630. While in Keggin v. Hillsborough County, 71 Fla. 356, 71 So. 372, in a full and considered opinion the Supreme Court of Florida has declared: “A county is a political subdivision of the state. * * * It is not a corporation; * * * it is created for administrative purposes. * * * It is purely political, in character; its functions are of a public nature, constituting the machinery and essential agency by and through which many of the powers of the state are exercised.”
The county commissioners had under the laws of Florida power and authority to discharge either in person or through employees, and or agents, duties thus imposed, including those to which the last clause of the employment resolution had particular reference, “To represent the county in the prosecution and defense of all legal cases, to issue bonds in their respective counties,” etc. They elected to discharge some of these duties in person, some through .appellee, the county attorney, as an employee upon a regular monthly salary, and some through appellee, the county attorney, as an agent specially compensated in each matter as it arose. In each of these instances the duties were performed by one having an intimate, official, and functional relation to the county, and being in law and in fact an agency and instrumentality through which the county, a political subdivision of the state, performed its governmental powers.
It is generally acknowledged that just as the state may not subject the federal government indirectly to the burden of state taxation by laying a tax upon the business which it does with, or the moneys which it pays to, an agency seléeted by it for the exertion of its constitutional powers, McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 4 L. Ed. 579; Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi, 277 U. S. 219, 48 S. Ct. 451, 72 L. Ed. 857, 56 A. L. R. 583, the federal government may not, through the indirect means of an income tax upon moneys paid to an agent of its selection, tax a sovereign state, Metcalf & Eddy v. Mitchell, 269 U. S. 521, 46 S. Ct. 172, 70 L. Ed. 384, and cases cited.
Here agencies and activities not remote and detached from, but so connected with, in fact, so intimate to the very official life and being of the county, are in ■ question as that to burden them with taxation is in effect to tax the state itself. Under these circumstances, the effort to tax must fail, for the power to tax, which is the power to destroy, may be exercised neither by the state against the federal government, nor by the federal government against the state. Each as to the other is sovereign, and each has immunity from the other’s taxing power.