While Dawson’s Creek rolls like the Jordan over Tax Court, Ch J Maurice B (“Mighty Mo”) Foley nowise treats this enforced cessation of electronic publication as an excuse for sloth.

Today he and his general staff remedy the third-party document subpoena problem that judge James S (“Big Jim”) Halpern raised back in October. See my blogpost “The Blatant Subpoena,” 10/1/20.

Y’all will recall that the August 6 press release seemed to open a 14-day period for gaming Tax Court discovery rules by playing with third-party document subpoenas. Judge Big Jim dealt with this in my blogpost aforementioned, but there apparently remained enough windage for the odd blowback.

So today Ch J Mighty Mo goes the press release route.

Now I know these are all some temporary fixes during COVID-19, and will go away (supposedly) when the world is free.

But why wait until then to harmonize Tax Court Rules with the FRCP?

It is alleged that, three (count ’em, three) weeks from today, the floodwaters of Dawson’s Creek will subside from The Glasshouse in the Bubble, and a torrent of decisions, opinions, small-claimers, and orders will gush forth as did water from a rock struck long ago by a much more exalted personage. I expect almost as much argument will accompany this event as did its predecessor.

Meantime, what is the ‘umble blogger to do?

I cannot reasonably foresee finding enough copy to fill “the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth” of anything but blather. No reader requires blather from me; any seeking same can find it abundantly elsewhere.

So I’ll sniff the metaphorical winds each day. If there’s something worth blogging (may it happen!) I’ll do it.

If not, I’ll hold my peace.

Back in May, The Palmolives (Palmolive Building Investors, LLC, DK Palmolive Building Investors Participants, LLC, Tax Matters Partner, Docket No. 23444-14, filed 5/27/20) stiped out. The Palmolives gave up the $33 million façade easement, got to keep the basis split among façade, retail and condos (which is good news for us lawyers who represent condo developers), and walked on the chops.

OK, so this is old news. And I’d made an unspoken resolve not to chew my cabbage twicet while Dawson’s Creek submerged The Glasshouse that Vic Built.

Y’all will recollect I gave the Palmolives’ trusty attorneys a Taishoff “good try, hors classe” in my blogpost “Judge on a Tear,” 6/7/19. And while I didn’t say so then, I fully expected a trip to 7 Cir, even though The Palmolives’ try for a Section 7482 interlocutory appeal had already cratered (see my blogpost “What’s It Worth?” 11/14/17).

After all, there followed five (count ’em, five) stipulations of fact with exhibits, and four (count ’em, four) volumes of trial transcript through this past January. Check out the docket search.*

After all that, why fold without getting a decision and taking the appeal? The trial was paid for. Bar the interest and the legal fees and disbursements, it couldn’t get worse.

Maybe the retirement of Judge Posner, 7 Cir’s true original and a primordial judicial rebel, in September 2017 is the answer. His famous statement on his retirement sums up why dictionary chaws and slavish adherence are so much flubdubbery: “I pay very little attention to legal rules, statutes, constitutional provisions. A case is just a dispute. The first thing you do is ask yourself—forget about the law—what is a sensible resolution of this dispute? The next thing was to see if a recent Supreme Court precedent or some other legal obstacle stood in the way of ruling in favor of that sensible resolution. And the answer is that’s actually rarely the case. When you have a Supreme Court case or something similar, they’re often extremely easy to get around.”

Ya gotta love the dude, whether or not you agree with him. And that would have been an opinion I would have loved to blog.

Edited to add, 9/8/21: Of course the Genius Baristas sealed the stip-out, even though it had been online for all to see under the previous system.

*Docket Search Palmolive

I’ve hitherto loudly lamented that one had to surry on down to the stoned soul Glasshouse in the Wannabe State to obtain a glimpse of briefs and like filings, the same not being available via PACER.

But COVID-19, the proverbial ill wind, may have blown a scintilla of good.

Though the “small court,” notoriously shy and best known for the large bushelbasket under which it keeps its light, has kept this a well-hidden secret, I hasten to play the Matthew 10:27 gambit.

Here’s the story: “Until further notice, requests for copies of Court records from non-parties (copy requests) must be made by telephone and will be fulfilled electronically by email. The Court’s fees with respect to these copy requests will be $0.50 per page, with a per-document cap of $3.00. The Records Department can be reached at (202) 521-4688.”

Cheaper than PACER, given the three-buck cap. Any document you want, for the price of a bottle of Trader Joe’s famous plonk. 

My colleague Peter Reilly, CPA, sent me the following request, asking that I would circulate it on this my blog. While I do not generally refer my readers to other sources, Mr Reilly is a valued colleague, and I am glad to oblige him.

He writes: “I am soliciting nominations for best Tax Court decision of 2020.  Any criterion at all is acceptable.  I go by humor, practical significance and broader meaning.”

Send your suggestions to him by commenting on his blog http://blogs.forbes.com/peterjreilly/

I have already given him my choice, but to avoid tainting the jury pool I will not mention it here.

Edited to add, 12/1/20: Please use yourtaxmatterspartner.com  for comments. Forbes doesn’t take comments, for whatever reason.

As I said back in September, 2012 B.C. (Before Corona), “This was the title of the fictional rogue General Flashman’s memoirs, as discovered in a saleroom by the late G. M. Fraser.” But it suits the departure of Judge Ruwe, finally retired as of last Wednesday.

Here’s the skinny: https://ustaxcourt.gov/resources/press/11302020.pdf

I had suspected this was in the works, but hesitated to break the news without some confirmation. The stillness from Public Affairs should have given me a clue. See my blogpost “From My Notebook – Part Deux,” 7/21/20.

Howbeit, I and all my readers with Judge Ruwe a happy retirement.

I’m revealing no tricks of the journo trade with that headline. Every journo with no ideas and a future deadline can fall back on that oldie-but-goodie. And there are enough old-timers and once-upon-a-timers to fill the odd column; and enough readers who remember them, or who wish they’d been around way back when.

I haven’t sunk to that depth yet. But the Dawson’s Creek floodwaters have reached oppressive levels. I leave to the trade press and blogosphere the task of covering the Big Courts, those who shelter beneath the wings of Article III. They also do the 1111 Constitution Ave, NW, scene, with sources and resources accumulated years before I showed up. They have moats I won’t try to cross.

So where are they now, the humble Small Courtiers that provide the fodder on which feeds this my blog?

I suppose the judges are writing the orders and opinions that will arise when Dawson’s Creek subsides, poking out like cars from a flooded underpass, supposedly before New Year’s Eve.

The hardlaboring intake clerks and flailing datestampers, hitherto driven by electronic filing to endangered-species status but back in action for the present, went back a couple weeks ago (hi, Judge Holmes) to The Glasshouse that Vic Built. I imagine they are again reading the mail, stamping and filing.

Come to think of it, maybe Tax Court’s love of wet-ink petitions and amendments thereto is motivated by a desire to keep the intakers taking and the flailing datestampers flailing away, rather than standing in the unemployment line. I refuse self-checkout lines at the grocers’ for the same reason. But that’s another story.

Meantime, I’ll keep writing this blog.

He wasn’t a member of the Sheepshead Bay seafood dynasty, beloved of The Girl of My Dreams. How often has she told me of her childhood feasts, standing in the steamy messhall of the above-referred-to dynasts, coat over arms, waiting for the satiated to vacate a table and let her and her family at the goodies. And what meals they were, she says. They improve with the passage of time. But gone, alas, like our youth, too soon.  

No, Vic Lundy is the subject of a panegyric from the GSA, in its pre-political days. Vic, it happens, aside from a CIB and a Purple Heart to his credit, is the architect who designed The Glasshouse at 400 Second Street, NW, and brought the job in on time and on budget; for which he should have gotten at least two more gongs beside the Medal of Freedom Gerry Ford gave him.

Check it out.

Even though Hugh Wheeler’s 1961 opus thus-entitled got pulled after but five (count ’em, five) performances, the title serves as a headpiece for this Thanksgiving Day.

Vic Lundy’s MidMo masterpiece remains shuttered. Such gatherings as there are remain restricted, subject to the Supremes’ latest pronunciamento.

Still and all, we have much for which to be thankful.

We’ve gotten this far.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I echo Herbert Kretzmer’s last-millennium lament as I scan the locked-down Tax Court website, and recall my blogpost “Aground in Dawson’s Creek,” 10/20/20.

My dream is a United States Tax Court Bar Association. No, not another magnet for practitioners’ dollars; all of us have seen plenty of those. And not another Continuing Ed vending machine, either. Ditto.

What I dreamed is voices louder than one voice. We all know (if I’m not deluding myself) that changes in the Glasshouse procedures and rules are necessary. COVID-19 rammed the lesson home. And how!

All-electronic filing is necessary. Many courts, Federal and State, have gone all-electronic, with special webpages to provide access for the self-represented. The wet-ink petition and amendments are relics, and should be recalled, if at all, in the next edition of Dubroff and Hellwig. Rule 34 points the way. Time to make it happen.

And geography is irrelevant. Remote trials are happening, and no one has noticed any material degradation in results. If there are any, these should be noted as soon as possible, and publicly, so any can be remedied. But the expense of a traveling court is a real negative. Computer access is easier to provide, and cheaper.

The Stealth Subpoena and kindred deviations from FRCP need to be examined and, where appropriate, harmonized.

Extensions of time, where clients are not prejudiced, should be mandated to be mutual. Our New York State Chief Judge’s Civility Rules have so provided for years. It should not be up to individual judges (thank you again, Judge Emin (“Eminent”) Toro) to police attorneys’ conduct, much less for bloggers to have to waste electrons thereon.

Entry of Appearance for law firms is past due. The oldest New York law firm I know of started in 1797, and I’m sure some even older are flourishing in several jurisdictions. I know Tax Court is a specialized court requiring separate admission for each attorney, but since a current certificate of good standing and fifty Georges is all it takes, why not permit a law firm to enter appearance for all its USTC-admitted attorneys on one form? If it be objected that the hardlaboring clerks can’t send communications to dozens of attorneys in the tax department of a multinational white-shoe, the form can designate a lead (sort of a tax matters partner) who gets everything, but any attorney on the form can cover a routine calendar call or similar show-up. Every firm I know of in any other court can do that, with no ill effects. Of course, showing unprepared, or without authority, for something substantive, without a real good excuse, doesn’t cut it. Ditto for USTCPs, if any are such firms.

More to follow.

But one person saying this is worthless. And other practitioners may have good arguments why any or all of the foregoing lack merit, or need major overhauls.

But without a central forum where all this can be debated, and the wheat separated from the cliché, and where Ch J Maurice B (“Mighty Mo”) Foley and his colleagues can be presented with something better and bigger than ever I could muster, all will remain The Dream I Dreamed.