I’ve often commented that US Tax Court does more and different valuation cases than any other. Many courts value real property for ad valorem tax and inheritance tax purposes, Tax Court among them. But Tax Court values the worth of a Brand Ambassador and a Brand Icon for golfclub sellers. Tax Court values the worth of the remaining intellectual property of a dead King of Pop also accused of dire crimes against children. Tax Court can tell you more about Dixieland Boondockery and New York granite quarries than you’d want to know. And of course there’s the fair market rent of the Plentywood Drug Store in Plentywood, MT, a frontier town, population density 2/sq. mi., for which see my blogpost “How The West Was Won,” 4/26/21.

But you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.

That Obliging Jurist, Judge David Gustafson, goes deep into the tall timber in Murfam Enterprises LLC, Wendell Murphy, Jr., Tax Matters Partner, Docket No. 8039-16, filed 7/27/23, to evaluate and unobfuscate the worth of swine Certificates of Coverage.

Before you ask “Didn’t we just dispose of this long-running extravaganza?” yes, we did. See my blogpost “Obliging Meets Concurring,” 6/15/23. But the Murfams want Rule 161 reconsideration. They claim Judge Gustafson got the pig numbers wrong.

No, I didn’t says Judge Gustafson, you misstate what your appraiser (upon whom Judge Gustafson relied) said. He took out a number that you are trying to put back in to bolster your write-off. Now it’s true that even the Murfam’s appraiser missed the impact of pig raising on timbering and recreation.

“One can imagine a more exacting analysis that might demonstrate defects in Mr. [appaiser]’s approach. Perhaps it would have been better to separately value the 1,115-acre easement portion and the 5,056-acre non-easement portion, with attention to the timber and recreation values and with a more precise assessment of the effect of the hog farm operation on those values. However, neither party put in evidence of such an analysis, and if Mr. [appraiser]’s method is imprecise, it nonetheless does avoid the defects of the approach that petitioner asks us to take. Petitioner had the burden of proof, so it is appropriate that we accept their expert’s method in the absence of a better one.” Order, at p. 4. (Name omitted).

Lest this blogpost be as long as Judge Gustafson’s order, I omit Judge Gustafson’s excursion into “such rarefied heights of pure mathematics” to separate the pigs from the woods. But I recommend this Order to all who think Tax Court is a barren waste of arcana.