Opinion ID: 253432
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Alleged Need To Exhaust Administrative Remedies.

Text: 7 The District of Columbia urges that the taxpayer has failed to exhaust his administrative remedy. Of course it is a 'long settled rule of judicial administration that no one is entitled to judicial relief for a supposed or threatened injury until the prescribed administrative remedy has been exhausted.' 2 But if the administrative remedy is an alternative remedy it is not 'prescribed' within the meaning of that rule and need not be followed. Common-law remedies survive unless the administrative remedy is prescribed, i.e., required. 3 The D.C. Code merely provides such a remedy; it does not prescribe it. Before statutes provided recourse to administrative boards, actions in the nature of assumpsit for money had and received were available for recovery of taxes. 4 Clearly Congress can proscribe a common-law right of action; and, conversely, it can prescribe an exclusive administrative remedy. But the D.C.Code does neither; it carefully spells out that the administrative remedy which it provides 'shall not be deemed to take away from the taxpayer any remeby which he might have under any other provision of law.' 5 Thus the taxpayer is now permitted recourse to either an administrative remedy or a common-law suit for recovery of District of Columbia taxes. 8 Moreover, under the Code, the ultimate building and loan association-- 'Well, i.e., a decision by the Tax Court, an 'independent agency' in the District Government, 6 or indeed even the filing of an appeal with that Court, precludes the taxpayer from filing suit under his common-law remedy. 7 If the exhaustion of the administrative remedy is a bar to a common-law action, a fortiori it can in no sense be a condition precedent to such a suit. 9 We conclude that Dr. Brady's failure to exhaust his administrative remedy did not preclude his bringing action in the District Court. 10 It is settled that to establish the right to his remedy at law, assumpsit for money had and received, a taxpayer has only to pay the tax involuntarily. Neither the denial of a claim for refund nor even the filing of such a claim is a prerequisite to his suit. 8 11