Feldman v. Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act

• Decision Date: 06 May 1952
• Citation: 138 Conn. 724,89 A.2d 210
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: FELDMAN v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT. FELDMAN LOCKER PLANT, Inc. v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT. Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut

Page 210

89 A.2d 210

138 Conn. 724

FELDMAN v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT.

FELDMAN LOCKER PLANT, Inc. v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

May 6, 1952.

Belton A. Copp, New London, for appellants.

Harry Silverstone, Asst. Atty. Gen., George C. Conway, Atty. Gen., for appellee.

Before BROWN, C. J., and JENNINGS, BALDWIN, INGLIS and O'SULLIVAN, JJ. BROWN, Chief Justice.

The appeal in each of these cases from the assessment of contributions against the plaintiff under the Unemployment Compensation Act was dismissed by the Superior Court. The plaintiffs have filed a consolidated appeal from the judgments. Both actions were submitted to the Superior Court on identical stipulations of fact and the decision in both turned on the identical question of law.

Since January 1, 1948, the plaintiff Abraham Feldman, as sole proprietor, has owned and operated in Norwich a grocery and locker plant business known as Feldman's Store and Locker Plant. He has personally managed this business and employed one person to help him. Since the above date the plaintiff Feldman Locker Plant, Inc., a Connecticut corporation, has owned and operated a locker plant in New London. The corporation is owned and controlled, within the meaning of § 1325b of the 1951 Cumulative Supplement to the General Statutes, by the plaintiff Abraham Feldman. He is its president and treasurer and one of its directors. From and after January 1, 1948, the corporation employed Abraham Feldman, Hyman Feldman, vice-president and general manager, and Maxwell Schwatlow, a butcher.

Section 1325b provides in part as follows: '(4) [A]n employer who has four or more employees in his employment at the same time during any thirteen weeks in any calendar year after 1941 shall become subject to this chapter at the end of the thirteenth of such weeks. In determining whether an employer in question shall be considered, for the purposes of this section, as having had a particular number of employees in his employment at a given time, there shall be counted, in addition to his own employees, if any, (a) the employees of each employer whose business was at the given time owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by the same interests which owned or controlled the business of the employer in question * * *'. Since Feldman had one employee and the corporation had three employees, of whom Feldman was one, the precise question is whether, within the terms of the provision quoted, each plaintiff shall be held to have had four employees on January 1, 1948, and for thirteen weeks thereafter, thereby becoming liable to assessment under the Unemployment Compensation Act.

While the plaintiffs do not question that, by reason of the provision quoted, the statute is effective to warrant disregarding the corporate veil in determining the number of employees of each plaintiff, they contend that the statute must mean that, the veil having been lifted, existence of the corporate entity cannot be asserted to afford a basis for counting Feldman as an employee of the corporation. In short, in the words of their brief, their claim is that to construe the statute as warranting the conclusion that the corporation had three instead of two employees, thus bringing both the Norwich and the New London units within the act, 'violates the spirit of this Act, which the legislature intended to cover only those employers, employing units, or interests which had four or more employees for the requisite period of time.' They therefore urge that Feldman, as the 'same interest' and 'the employer' within the meaning § 1325b(4)(a), did not have four or more persons in his employ during the period in question. This language is relied upon as authority: '[W]e are not required to give the words of the statute their literal meaning. 'The search is for the intent of the lawmakers, and when it is clearly ascertainable it prevails over the literal sense and precise letter of the statute.' * * * "The letter of a law is not in all cases a correct guide to the true sense of the law maker.' Statutes general in their terms are frequently construed to admit implied exceptions.' * * * 'A thing within the letter of a statute may be unaffected by its provisions, if not within the intention of the makers, and if what was the intention sufficiently appears from the terms which they used, in connection with the conditions calling for such legislation." New Haven Savings Bank v. Warner, 128 Conn. 662, 668, 25 A.2d 50, 53.

In construing a legislative act we must not only consider it in the light of its history, its language, the purpose it is designed to serve and the circumstances surrounding its enactment but, in determining its purpose and scope, make every part operative and harmonious with every other part in so far as is possible. Savings Bank of Rockville v. Wilcox, 117 Conn. 188, 193, 167 A. 709. As we have heretofore...