Mississippi Unemployment Compensation Commission v. Avent

• Decision Date: 27 October 1941
• Docket Number: 34712.
• Citation: 192 Miss. 85,4 So.2d 296
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: MISSISSIPPI UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION COMMISSION et al. v. AVENT.

4 So.2d 296

192 Miss. 85

MISSISSIPPI UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION COMMISSION et al. v. AVENT.

No. 34712.

Supreme Court of Mississippi

October 27, 1941

Harry M. Bryan and Henry Edmonds, both of Jackson, and Greek L Rice, Atty. Gen., for appellants.

James Stone & Sons, of Oxford, for appellee.

ALEXANDER Justice.

In 1938 and prior thereto, appellee owned a drug store and a dairy in the town of Oxford. One R. B. Ragland was employed at the dairy. At the drug store there were six employees and at the dairy four, all of whom were controlled by appellee who became subject to the requirements of our Unemployment Compensation Law, Laws 1936, ch. 176; Laws 1938, ch. 147; Laws 1940, ch. 295. Ragland thereupon became entitled, as an employee in a covered employment under the act, to have wage credits set up for his benefit in line with the policy and purposes thereof. During the year mentioned appellee, by executed deed, gave the dairy with its stock and appurtenances to his wife. Thereupon appellee discontinued the maintenance of wage credits and Ragland filed claim for benefits, which was denied by the Claims Examiner for the Commission. The finding of the Examiner was reversed by the referee, and, upon appeal to the Board of Review, the claim was again allowed. Following procedural routine under the Act, the matter was reviewed by the Circuit Court, which disallowed the claim, and the matter is before this Court upon appeal from the Circuit Court.

The pertinent provisions of the Act are as follows:

"'Employing unit' means any individual or type of organization including any partnership, association, trust, estate joint-stock company, insurance company or corporation whether domestic or foreign, or the receiver, trustee in bankruptcy, trustee or successor thereof, or the legal representative of a deceased person, which has or subsequent to January 1, 1935, had in its employ one or more individuals performing services for it within this state. All individuals performing services within this state for any employing unit which maintains two or more separate establishments within this state shall be deemed to be employed by a single employing unit for all the purposes of this act. Each individual employed to perform or to assist in performing the work of any agent or employee of an employing unit shall be deemed to be employed by such employing unit for all purposes of this act, whether such individual was hired or paid directly by such employing unit or by such agent or employee, provided the employing unit had actual or constructive knowledge of the work." Sec. 19(g).

"'Employer' means:

(1) Any employing unit which for some portion of a day, but not necessarily simultaneously, in each of twenty different weeks, whether or not such weeks are or were consecutive, within either the current or the preceding calendar year, has or had in employment, eight or more individuals (irrespective of whether the same individuals are or were employed in each such day);

* * *

(4) Any employing unit which, together with one or more other employing units, is owned or controlled (by legally enforceable means or otherwise) directly or indirectly by the same interests, or which owns or controls one or more other employing units (by legally enforceable means or otherwise), and which, if treated as a single unit with such other employing units or interests, or both, would be an employer under paragraph (1) of this subsection." Sec. 19(h).

The Board of Review found as facts substantially as follows: That appellee was in 1938 the owner and operator...