Miller v. Ribicoff
| Decision Date | 06 October 1961 |
| Docket Number | No. 20933.,20933. |
| Citation | 198 F. Supp. 819 |
| Parties | Mamie L. MILLER, individually, as parent and natural guardian of Theodore Miller, a minor, Plaintiff, v. Abraham A. RIBICOFF, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare of the United States, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Michigan |
Rothe, Marston, Mazey, Sachs & O'Connell, Detroit, Mich., for plaintiff.
Lawrence Gubow and Jay Nolan, Detroit, Mich., for defendant.
Plaintiff appeals from an order of the Appeals Council of the Social Security Agency, affirming the hearing examiner denying benefits to plaintiff and child under the Old Age and Survivors Act, 42 U.S.C.A. § 401 et seq., holding that plaintiff, Mamie Miller, was not the lawful wife of decedent Roosevelt Miller.
The question in this court revolves around whether or not Roosevelt Miller, deceased, was of legal age when he married his first wife.
The facts are these: On the 6th day of September, 1936, Roosevelt Miller was married to Rochelle Huckleberry of Dawson, Georgia, claiming to be over the legal age of seventeen years. A friend, Bill Gaines, appeared for him and swore Miller was over seventeen. By his first wife Miller had children and lived with her until 1939. At that time she left him but they never got a divorce and she remarried. He never legally remarried but started living with plaintiff by whom he has had a child. Until this matter came up there seemingly never was any claim that Roosevelt Miller was under age when he married his first wife but now the second wife claims Miller was under age at that time and the friend, Gaines, who originally represented that Roosevelt Miller was over twenty-one, comes before the hearing examiner and now says that at the time of Miller's first marriage Miller was only fourteen years of age.
There is conflicting testimony but the hearing examiner elected to believe that one of two situations represented the facts:
First, that Roosevelt Miller was over seventeen years of age when he married his first wife and never having received a divorce from her could not legally either by common law marriage or otherwise, consummate a marriage between him and the plaintiff; or
Second, that since Roosevelt Miller lived with his first wife after he became of age even under the present claims of plaintiff that that first marriage became a legal marriage even if it hadn't been before and there should have been a divorce.
After the death of Roosevelt Miller on July 7, 1958, plaintiff went into the Probate Court of Wayne County and among other things, was granted an order giving her all the assets of Roosevelt Miller — if there were any.
The government was not made a party to that law suit.
The Probate Court in the State of Michigan has the authority to do what it did in this case but can it bind the Federal government by an order of that kind unless the Federal government is a party? That is an added issue.
We further find that the evidence in the record of the hearing examiner reflects an overwhelming weight of evidence that the hearing examiner and the Appeals Council did not err, as a matter of law, in denying plaintiff benefits under the Old Age and Survivors Act, unless the examiner was bound by the order of the Probate Court.
In the record of the hearing examiner several inconsistencies are apparent as to the age of Roosevelt Miller at the time of his purported marriage to Rochelle Huckleberry.
In support of the contention that Roosevelt Miller was over seventeen and therefore legally capable of marriage in Georgia, we find the following documents:
1. A letter from the Clerk of ...
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Collins v. Celebrezze
...judicata nor a collateral estoppel effect as to the Secretary where he was not party to the state proceedings. E. g., Miller v. Ribicoff, 198 F. Supp. 819 (E.D.Mich.1961); Merek v. Flemming, 192 F.Supp. 528 (S.D.Tex.), vacated per curiam on consent, 295 F.2d 691 (5 Cir. 1961); Patten v. Fle......
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Zeldman v. Celebrezze
...privy to the New York declaratory judgment action and is not bound thereby. In support of this position he relies upon Miller v. Ribicoff, 1961, E.D.Mich., 198 F.Supp. 819 and Nigro v. Hobby, 1954, D.Neb., 120 F. Supp. 16, among others. In Miller the issue was whether plaintiff was the lawf......
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Myers v. Richardson
...Celebrezze v. Sutton, 338 F.2d 417, 421 (CA 8, 1964); Thomas v. Celebrezze, 331 F.2d 541, 543 (CA 4, 1964); Miller v. Ribicoff, 198 F.Supp. 819, 821 (E.D.Mich.1961). Judicial review of the Secretary\'s findings of fact is limited to inquiry whether there is substantial evidence to support s......
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Snell v. Secretary of Health, Education & Welfare, Civ. A. No. 16096.
...proceeding was ex parte and thus was not a real adversary proceeding. Nigro v. Hobby, 120 F.Supp. 16 (D.Neb.1954), and Miller v. Ribicoff, 198 F.Supp. 819 (E.D.Mich.1961), were both distinguished in two more recent cases. Collins v. Celebrezze, 250 F.Supp. 37 (S.D.N.Y.1966); Zeldman v. Cele......