Am. Sumatra Tobacco Corp. v. Tone

• Citation: 127 Conn. 132,15 A.2d 80
• Court: Supreme Court of Connecticut
• Decision Date: 25 July 1940
• Parties: AMERICAN SUMATRA TOBACCO CORPORATION v. TONE et al.

15 A.2d 80
127 Conn. 132

AMERICAN SUMATRA TOBACCO CORPORATION
v.
TONE et al.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

July 25, 1940.

15 A.2d 80

Appeal from Superior Court, Hartford County; William H. Comley, Judge.

Proceedings by American Sumatra Tobacco Company to review action of Joseph M. Tone, administrator of the unemployment compensation act, and others in making assessments of unemployment compensation contributions against the plaintiff brought to the Superior Court and tried to the court.

From a judgment for the plaintiff, declaring the assessment void, defendants appeal.

No error.

Argued before AVERY, BROWN, JENNINGS, and ELLS, JJ.

Harry Silverstone, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Francis A. Pallotti, Atty. Gen., for appellant.

Harry L. Nair and Solomon Eisner, both of Hartford, for appellee.

JENNINGS, Judge.

The plaintiff is a grower and packer of Connecticut valley shade tobacco known as type 61a. On May 9, 1939, the defendant made an assessment upon the plaintiff for the payment of contributions in respect to the wages paid by it to the persons employed by it in the warehouses where the tobacco was packed. The plaintiff appealed. The act under which demand was made (General Statutes, 1939 Supplement, § 1334e) exempts agricultural labor from the operation of the act. The precise question raised by this appeal is whether the wages in question were paid to employees engaged in processing and packing the tobacco "as an incident to ordinary farming operations as distinguished from manufacturing or commercial operations," under a regulation promulgated by the administrator pursuant to the act.

The general set-up is described, the pertinent statutes are cited, the controlling regulation of the administrator is quoted and many of the relevant cases are discussed in the recent case of H. Duys & Co., Inc. v. Tone, 125 Conn. 300, 5 A.2d 23. That case decided that the regulation is constitutional and the exercise of a valid delegation of legislative power and that a conclusion that it is not within the purview of the act was erroneous (125 Conn, page 312, 5 A.2d 23), but that as Duys & Company was not a grower but packed the tobacco grown by others

15 A.2d 81

through the labor of its own employees for a commission and expenses, it was not within the exemption. The plaintiff in the case at bar directed its efforts to distinguishing its situation from that case in that it grows its own tobacco and packs it in its own warehouses through the labor of its own employees.

In order to bring out this distinction and its effect, this case was tried at length and a very detailed finding was made. Repeating as little as possible of the description of the general situation in the Duys case, the finding may be summarized as follows: The plaintiff is a Delaware corporation producing shade grown tobacco in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Georgia and Florida. This case is concerned only with its operations in Connecticut. It there grows and packs over a thousand acres of tobacco annually. The number of employees varies with the season and at times reaches two thousand. The production and preparation for market of Connecticut valley shade grown tobacco is a complicated, intricate and unique process, costing approximately $800 per acre. It includes the preparation of the seed beds, the preparation and fertilization of the soil where the plant will grow, the construction of the shade tent, the transplanting of the plants from the seed bed to the field, the cultivation of the plants and the harvesting of the leaves. After the leaves are...