"You Bum!"

Jimmy Hoffa, boss of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, is plenty tough. But last week was enough to test even Jimmy's mettle. In quick succession, he was hit by two court actions--one accusing him and a buddy of taking over $1,000,000 in payments from a trucking company, the other charging him with beating the daylights out of an enemy.

The man who said Hoffa had slugged him was Samuel Baron, 59, the 5-ft. 6 1/2-in., 152-lb. field director of the Teamsters' warehouse division. Baron told how he and labor's little Napoleon had been feuding for years. During an argument in the union's Washington headquarters, Baron said, Hoffa suddenly began advancing on him with fists clenched and jaw muscles twitching. "I thought," said Baron, " 'This man is absolutely out of his mind.' Before I know it, he swings and catches me in the left eye and knocks me down. I got up--I wish I had the muscles, but I don't--and all I could do, I banged him--pushed at his shoulders with all my might. I nearly knocked him down. I said, 'You bum, you would use your muscles.' "I turned and started to walk away. I thought they were holding him, but all of a sudden he grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around and hit me in the right eye. As I was getting up, he pushed me over a chair." When Baron decided to bring suit against Hoffa, he asked for protection, was assigned two FBI agents. While Baron talked with newsmen at his apartment in Silver Spring, Md., the phone rang constantly with the pleas of Teamster officials asking Baron to withdraw his charges.

In court, Hoffa pleaded not guilty to the charge of assault and was granted a jury trial. If convicted, he could get up to one year in jail and a $500 fine. But Baron, for one, was not optimistic about the chances of any other Teamster witness testifying against their hard-bitten boss.

Said he: "It would be absolute suicide." The next day Hoffa was accused of conspiring with Commercial Carriers Inc., a Michigan trucking firm, to violate provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act that prohibit payoffs from employer to employee.

According to the grand jury indictment, Hoffa and the late Owen Bert Brennan, Teamster vice president, got $1,008,057 from Commercial Carriers, a company bound by contract to Teamster Local 299 (president: Jimmy Hoffa). Under the scheme, Commercial Carriers set up a company named Test Fleet in Nashville, Tenn., then transferred all of its stock in the firm to the wives of Hoffa and Brennan, taking care to muddle the trail by using their maiden names, Josephine Poszywak (Mrs. Hoffa) and Alice Johnson (Mrs. Brennan). Commercial Carriers then agreed to lease Test Fleet's ten trucks for an unlimited time. What is more, Commercial Carriers obligingly agreed to pay the bills for all the operations of Test Fleet, which meant that every cent the firm took in was pure profit.

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