Wickwire v. Reinecke
| Decision Date | 21 November 1927 |
| Docket Number | No. 149,149 |
| Citation | 72 L.Ed. 184,275 U.S. 101,48 S.Ct. 43 |
| Parties | WICKWIRE v. REINECKE, Internal Revenue Collector |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Forest D. Siefkin, of Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.
Mr. Wm. D. Mitchell, Sol. Gen., Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Mr. Sewall Key, all of Washington, D. C., for respondent.
This is a suit by Jessie L. Wickwire, individually and as executrix of her husband, Edward L. Wickwire, to recover taxes from the United States collector of internal revenue for the First district of Illinois, on the ground that they were assessed against her and collected without legal authority. The tax was a so-called estate tax assessed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue under section 402(c) of the Revenue Act of 1918 (chapter 18, 40 Stat. 1057, 1097 (Comp. St. § 6336 3/4 c)), The section and paragraph provided:
That 'the value of the gross estate of the decedent shall be determined by including the value at the time of his death of all property, real or personal, tangible or intangible, where-ever situated—
* * *'
On December 22, 1919, the decedent, Edward L. Wickwire, transferred to his wife, the petitioner herein, cash and securities to the value of $362,028.48. He died April 21, 1920. The executrix did not include the value of the transferred property as part of the gross estate in her return for federal estate tax purposes. The commissioner of Internal Revenue claimed and, after the usual administrative hearings, determined that the transfer was made in contemplation of death, and assessed as a tax $18,021.41, which was paid. The declaration of the petitioner set up these facts and alleged that the transfer by her husband to her was not in contemplation of death. The case came on for trial, a jury was impaneled ans sworn, counsel for the executrix made his opening statement, called one witness and was examining him when the court interrupted the proceedings to raise on its own motion the point that the finding of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, unless impeached for fraud, bad faith, or mistaken legal theory, could not be reviewed by the court. Accordingly the attorney for the United States thereupon interposed a motion to dismiss. The petitioner then made certain offers of proof to establish the fact that the transfer was not in contemplation of death which was excluded by the court. The case was then dismissed.
The tender of evidence was included in a bill of exceptions, and was, in general, that the deceased was 62 years old at the time of his death; that he had been suffering for 18 years from diabetes, but that his condition until early in 1920 was as good as, or better than, it had been for 10 years before that time; that his death was from uremic poisoning, the result of an attack of influenza suffered while he was in the South after the transfer; that he had long agreed with his wife that half of what he had belonged to her, but that their capital had been tied up so in business in his name that her half could...
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