It was a pleasure to meet Judge Marvel at the Judicial Confab in sunny North Carolina. Putting a face and a voice with a name makes a blogger’s life a treat.

Here’s a small-claimer from Her Honor that really has nothing new (the usual unsubstantiated T&E), but it gives Judge Marvel a chance to drop a first-class one-liner that really brightened my rainy New York Monday.

Meet Eric A. Amegankpoe and Nasmath A. Amegankpoe, 2015 T. C. Sum. Op. 36, filed 6/1/15.

Eric and Nas are Amway distributors and have lots of business expenses and big losses therefrom (against lots of W-2 income from their day jobs).

But proof of their business expenses is lacking.

Eric explains: “Mr. Amegankpoe testified that he had contemporaneously recorded the Amway-related travel expenses and mileage in a notebook and later transferred the information from the notebook to a spreadsheet that he maintained on a laptop computer at his home. Mr. Amegankpoe further testified that he had (1) lost the 2010 notebook during a move and (2) lost all of the data on the laptop computer in another incident in or around 2012.” 2015 T. C. Sum. Op. 36, at p. 9. (Footnote omitted).

Judge Marvel definitely isn’t buying that one.

“We decline to accept Mr. Amegankpoe’s incredible testimony regarding petitioners’ recordkeeping practices, which we find to be as believable as a student’s assertion that his dog twice ate his homework.” 2015 T. C. Sum. Op. 36, at p. 9.