Court Rulings

Workers' compensation - Determination of whether claimant's activities for his own lawn care company constitute work thus precluding him from receiving temporary total disability compensation from his primary employer - Claimant's activities consisted of signing four workers' checks and fueling and driving riding lawnmower onto a truck - Benefits not terminated when activities are truly minimal and only indirectly related to generating income.

APPEAL FROM FOURTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT, ADA COUNTY, W.E. SMITH, J. Page 60

Petitioner, a noncompetent Indian enrolled with the Gros Ventre Tribe, during the years 1958 and 1959 conducted farming and ranching operations on 20,547.14 acres of land on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. He had acquired part of the land used for this operation by allotment, part by gift from his mother who had received the land by allotment, part under a grazing permit, part by lease, part by purchase from other allottees, and part by a transfer of all the heirs' rights or claims by the Regional Director of the Indian Bureau in an order transferring inherited lands. All the original allotments were to the United States in trust for the allottee and contained a provision that at the expiration of 25 years the land would be transferred to the allottee \free from all charge and incumbrance whatsoever.\ Title to all lands allotted to, given to, or purchased by petitioner was taken in the name of the United States as trustee for petitioner. Held: Under the decision in Squire v. Capoeman, 351 U.S. 1 (1956), and respondent's ruling stating his application of the holding in that case, petitioner's income derived from farming and ranching activities on his allotted lands, his lands received by gift from his mother, and his land acquired by order transferring inherited lands is exempt from Federal income tax. Petitioner's income from farming and ranching activities on all the other lands used by him for such activities during 1958 and 1959 is subject to Federal income tax.