Brownell, Attorney General, Successor to the Alien Property Custodian, v. Singer (347 U.S. 403)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 5, 1954 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 347 U.S. 403 · 74 S. Ct. 548
- Decided
- April 5, 1954
- Term
- October Term 1953
- Vote
- 5–3
- Issue area
- Federal Taxation
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Per Curiam. Reversed. Zittman v. McGrath, 341 U. S. 471. The Chief Justice did not participate in the consideration or decision of this case. Mr. Justice Jackson, with whom Mr. Justice Frankfurter and Mr. Justice Douglas join, dissenting. The Court’s one-word decision reverses concurring judgments of three highly respected courts — the Court of Appeals of New York, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, First Department, and the Supreme Court, Special Term, New York County. It cites a single case, the implication being that the cited authority settled the question so fully and plainly that a contrary result could have been reached by the three lower courts only by failure to read or heed it. I think this Court owes those courts and the legal profession something more than a reference to an inapplicable decision. The facts of this case present novel questions that this Court should face and on which it should render a reasoned decision. The Yokohama Specie Bank established its New York agency, pursuant to the State’s permission, under a statute which provided that the bank’s assets in the State should be subject to the claims of creditors arising out of transactions with the New York agency in preference to other claims. On December 8, 1941, when war was declared with Japan, this agency was in the possession of the United States Treasury, which was supervising freezing…
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