Court Opinion

ID: 9454667
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:54:01.789469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:13.735167
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge
(dissenting) :
It would be a mistake for some future taxpayer, — or for that matter the ubiquitous tax gatherer — to read this opinion as classifying complicated, variable arrangements for disposal of some, but not all of the timber of one or more kinds on one or more tracts of land as either capital gain or ordinary income. This almost leads me to concur in Judge Coleman’s fascinating opinion which reflects undoubtedly an experience-acquired familiarity with the timber industry — Texas or Mississippi. But I cannot escape the feeling that crediting fully, as the Court does, the findings of the Trial Judge, they reveal a regular sale of the tie timber in question over a long period of time to a great number of purchasers. The fact that the tie timber has little value or its disposition— whether capital gains or ordinary income — produces but 1% plus of the income of the corporate taxpayer is completely irrelevant.
For example finding [7] shows a sale from 1951 to 1959 of 162,893,750 B.F. of tie timber. The cruise in 1959 showed 245,700,000 B.F. of tie timber remaining. Consequently at the start of the “liquidation” program in 1951 there was at least 418,593,750 B.F. of tie timber. But in 1959 only 10,650,282 B. F. of tie timber was sold, constituting Vasth (4%) of the 1959 stand (245,-700,000 B.F.). Thus it would take 24 years more to exhaust the timber, which meant a total span of 33 years (1951-59 equals 9 plus 24) to carry out this liquidation.
Although the tie timber had little value, represented a nuisance in forestry operations, and could be sold mostly only in small lots to a great number of operators of such a small time nature as to require cash sales, all of this shows that taxpayer was indeed engaged in the busyness of selling this timber to whomsoever it could dredge up on the best, even if poor, terms possible. If the land on which the particular trees cut were being sold, such a volume of small indi*605vidual sales over such a protracted — if not perpetual — period of time would surely mark the business — on any and all tests — as being the sale of property held in the course of business for sale to customers.
Reversing the familiar and sometime-wearied figure of the fruit of the tree, what would be true for the land must follow for the tree.
The tree falls into ordinary income so I respectfully dissent.