In Featherman v. Kennedy, the dispute centered on whether a pleaded contract fell under real estate employment regulations. The opinion concluded that the contract did not involve employing the plaintiff to purchase or sell real estate, placing it outside the scope of subdivision 6, section 7519 of the Revised Codes of 1935. As a result, the justice dissented, arguing that the demurrer to the complaint should have been overruled.
The case involved a defendant charged and convicted in district court under an older Montana statute for selling intoxicating liquor to a minor under age 21, resulting in a fine and suspended jail sentence. Following the precedent set in State v. Holt, the court held that the charging statute had been repealed by the State Liquor Control Act and that the Retail Liquor Dealers' License Act instead governed sales by licensed dealers or their employees. Under the new Act, such conduct by a licensee or employee constitutes a misdemeanor with different penalties, and the district court lacked original jurisdiction over the offense. The facts showed the defendant was a bartender employed by a licensed club and made the sale in that capacity, placing the case squarely under the Holt ruling. The court therefore reversed the judgment and remanded with instructions to dismiss the action.
This case involves the Montana inheritance tax applicable to an irrevocable 1915 trust transfer of corporate stock by Augusta Kohrs, and whether a 1934 agreement among beneficiaries modified the transfer in a way that triggered a higher tax rate enacted in 1923. The district court had determined the tax using the 1915 rate on the ground that beneficial interests vested at the time of the original transfer. The dissent argues that the statute plainly imposes the tax when a person becomes beneficially entitled in possession or expectancy to the property by the transfer, which occurred in 1915, that the 1915 transfer divested the settlor of title without retained powers, and that the 1934 agreement did not constitute the taxable event for purposes of the estate tax determination before the court. Tax laws are to be strictly construed in favor of the taxpayer, and the district court's order applying the earlier rate should therefore be affirmed.
The case concerned whether bonds and bank accounts belonging to a decedent were subject to taxation under Montana inheritance tax statutes governing joint ownership and transfers made shortly before death. The court held that the bonds were taxable because they were not held in the joint names of the decedent and alternate payees and had not been delivered to those payees, so they fell outside the statutory definition of joint property. As to the bank accounts totaling roughly $8,347, the opinion concluded that the statutory presumption for taxing transfers within three years did not apply, since those accounts were not a material part of an estate valued at more than $125,000, with only half therefore taxable under the joint-ownership provision.
The case concerned a dispute over the transfer of territory between school districts in Blaine County, Montana, after the county superintendent abandoned district 34 and reassigned its lands, with some going to district 15. Resident taxpayers and electors in the reassigned portion petitioned to move that area to district 67; the superintendent denied the petition, but the board of county commissioners reversed on appeal and ordered the transfer. Plaintiffs, taxpayers in district 15, sued to invalidate the board's order as arbitrary and unsupported by evidence. The district court upheld the board, and the Montana Supreme Court affirmed, holding that the statute vested the board with discretion to consider factors such as geography, access to schools, number of children, and financial impacts, that the decision was supported by substantial evidence and not arbitrary, and that courts would not interfere with a proper exercise of that discretion.
The case involved appellants Frank Holt, a tavern owner, and Elija Hall, his bartender, who were charged in separate informations with the crime of selling or supplying intoxicating liquor to a minor in June 1946. After a consolidated trial, the district court convicted both defendants under a repealed statute and sentenced each to a $400 fine plus six months in county jail. The Supreme Court reversed the convictions and dismissed the actions, reasoning that the charged statute had been repealed by subsequent legislation including the 1937 retail liquor dealers' license act, that the defendants could not be prosecuted for one crime and punished for another, and that the evidence tended to prove a different offense triable only as a misdemeanor in justice court rather than the charged felony.