Reger v. Adm'r

• Decision Date: 04 April 1946
• Citation: 46 A.2d 844,132 Conn. 647
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: REGER v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT.

132 Conn. 647

46 A.2d 844

REGER v. ADMINISTRATOR, UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION ACT.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

April 4, 1946.

Appeal from Superior Court, New Haven County; Mellitz, Judge.

Proceeding by Mae B. Reger against Administrator, Unemployment Compensation Act, on the appeal from the action of the Unemployment Commissioner denying her claim for unemployment compensation benefits. From a judgment denying the appeal and sustaining the award, plaintiff appeals.

Error, and case remanded with directions.

James F. Rosen and Milton Rice, both of New Haven (Alexander Winnick, of New Haven, on the brief), for appellant.

Harry Silverstone, Asst. Atty. Gen. (William L. Hadden, Atty. Gen., on the brief), for appellee.

Before MALTBIE, C. J., and BROWN, JENNINGS, ELLS, and DICKENSON, JJ.

BROWN, Judge.

This is an appeal from the denial by the unemployment commissioner for the third district of the plaintiff's claim for unemployment compensation benefits. The Superior Court sustained the commissioner and the plaintiff has appealed to this court. The material facts as found by the commissioner may be thus summarized: The plaintiff, a married woman thirty-one years of age, with no children, was employed as a bookkeeper by a wholesale grocery firm in New Haven from March, 1943, until January, 1944. She then voluntarily left that employment to go to Ozark, Alabama, where she joined her husband, who, as a member of the United States Army, was stationed at Camp Rucker nearby. She expected to remain in that locality about a year. Ozark has a population of forty-five hundred and its principal industries are textiles, lumber and the manufacture of peanut and cottonseed oils. Dothan, the largest town in that region, is twenty-eight miles away and has twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Its principal industries are transportation as carried on in the general offices of a railroad, wholesale distribution, peanut and cottonseed oil processing, textiles and lumber. In both places retail trade is at a very high level, but in Ozark the other work is on a seasonal basis which starts about September 1. The plaintiff filed claims for unemployment benefits covering the period from April 30 to July 16, 1944. Throughout this time she was physically and mentally able to work and was classified as a general office clerk, but would accept any office employment for which she could qualify, starting at $15 per week, and was willing to work any hours of the day and to travel thirty miles to her work. Many employers in Ozark and Dothan would not employ servicemen's wives because of the uncertainty of the length of time they would remain in that area. Five of the two hundred and nine placements made by the United States employment office at Dothan in May, 1944, were of office workers. The plaintiff refused no referrals by the employment office. She independently applied for a position as clerk-typist with the civil service commission at Camp Rucker but was advised that there were no jobs available. She also applied for a position with the U. S. O. in Ozark but was not hired because she was unable to take dictation, a requirement of the job.

The court's memorandum of decision shows that the controlling conclusion which it reached in deciding that the plaintiff was not ‘available for work’ within the requirement of General Statutes, Cum.Sup.1939, § 1339e(2), was, as recited in one of the plaintiff's assignments of error, ‘that the [plaintiff] had followed her soldier husband to Ozark, Alabama, and had voluntarily left employment in an active labor marked in order to relocate in a place where she could not be reasonably expected to obtain suitable work.’ Whether the test of availability for work implicit in this conclusion was correct is the question for determination. ‘The act was adopted in consequence of the enactment of the Federal Social Security Act * * *. It was designed to ameliorate the tragic consequences of unemployment. * * * pursuant to the plan effective under it, a fund is created by employers' involuntary contributions, out of which employees who lose their jobs may, after a waiting period, be paid benefits limited in amount and duration, while looking for work but unable to find it. * * * That the purpose of the act is remedial in character is clear. It is therefore to be construed liberally as regards beneficiaries, in order to accomplish its purpose.’ Waterbury Savings Bank v. Danaher, 128 Conn....