[35] Helvering v. Horst, 311 U.S. 112, 115-116 (1940).
[36] Bowers v. Kerbaugh-Empire Co., 271 U.S. 170 (1926).
[37] Goodrich v. Edwards, 255 U.S. 527 (1921).
[38] Ibid. See also Walsh v. Brewster, 255 U.S. 536 (1921).
[39] Lucas v. Alexander, 279 U.S. 573 (1929).
However, a litigant who, in 1915, reduced to judgment, a suit pending on February 26, 1913 for an accounting under a patent infringement, was unable to have treated as capital, and excluded from the taxable income produced by such settlement, that portion of his claim which had accrued prior to March 1, 1913. Income within the meaning of the amendment was interpreted to be the fruit that is born of capital, not the potency of fruition. All that the taxpayer possessed in 1913 was a contingent chose in action which was inchoate, uncertain, and contested.—United States v. Safety Car Heating & L. Co., 297 U.S. 88 (1936).
Similarly, purchasers of coal lands subject to mining leases executed before adoption of the amendment could not successfully contend that royalties received during 1920-1926 were payments for capital assets sold before March 1, 1913, and hence not taxable. Such an exemption, these purchasers argued, would have been in harmony with applicable local law whereunder title to coal passes immediately to the lessee on execution of such leases. To the Court, on the other hand, such leases were not to be viewed "as a 'sale' of the mineral content of the soil" inasmuch as minerals "may or may not be present in the leased premises and may or may not be found [therein]. * * * If found, their abstraction * * * is a time consuming operation and the payments made by the lessee * * * do not normally become payable as the result of a single transaction." The result for tax purposes would have been the same even had the lease provided that title to the minerals would pass only "on severance by the lessee."—Bankers Pocahontas Coal Co. v. Burnet, 287 U.S. 308 (1932); Burnet v. Harmel, 287 U.S. 103, 106-107, 111 (1932).
[40] Brushaber v. Union Pac. R. Co., 240 U.S. 1 (1916).
[41] MacLaughlin v. Alliance Ins. Co., 286 U.S. 244, 250 (1932).
[42] Helvering v. Independent L. Ins. Co., 292 U.S. 371, 381 (1934); Helvering v. Winmill, 305 U.S. 79, 84 (1938).