Baumet et al. v. United States et al. (344 U.S. 82)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided November 17, 1952 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 344 U.S. 82 · 73 S. Ct. 122
- Docket
- No. 39
- Argued
- October 15, 1952
- Decided
- November 17, 1952
- Term
- October Term 1952
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Clark
- Issue area
- Judicial Power
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
How the Justices voted
- Majority
- Chief Justice Vinson, Justice Minton, Justice Clark (wrote), Justice Burton, Justice Reed, Justice Black
- Dissenting
- Justice R. H. Jackson (wrote), Justice Douglas (wrote), Justice Frankfurter (wrote)
Opinion excerpt
Mr. Justice Clark delivered the opinion of the Court. Based on conflicting claims to the proceeds of a National Service Life Insurance policy, this is a companion case to United States v. Henning, ante, p. 66, decided today. The controversy is bottomed on the following facts: At the time of the insured serviceman’s death in 1942, his policy designated John J. Peters, his uncle, as sole beneficiary. Challenging the uncle’s standing as a permissible beneficiary under the statute, William Baumet, the insured’s natural father, instituted an action to claim the proceeds. Before that action came to trial, John J. Peters died. After a subsequent trial of the cause, the District Court found that John J. Peters and his wife Julie Peters had stood in loco parentis to the insured from 1938 until his death, and that the natural father’s contemporaneous conduct had amounted to an abandonment of his son. Concluding that John J. Peters, as a person in loco parentis, was a validly designated beneficiary under the Act, it dismissed Baumet’s complaint. Accordingly, the court awarded the installments which had matured during John J. Peters’ lifetime to Julie Peters as his personal representative, and the installments thereafter maturing to Julie individually as a person in loco parentis who “last bore” the parental relationship to the insured. The Court of Appeals affirmed. It agreed that…
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