Court Opinion

ID: 9478826
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:59:01.235215+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:38.179170
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur without reservation of any kind in both the result and the brilliant opinion of my brother Breyer. I file this concurrence for reasons entirely unrelated to the intrinsic merits, or perhaps more accurately, the intrinsic non-merits of the appeal.
This whole episode, although the outgrowth of over 1,000 cases consolidated by the Tax Court for trial and disposition, Glass v. Commissioner, 87 T.C. 1087 (1986), has now occupied the extended attention of six1 of the Courts of Appeals2 resulting in seven decisions, all in favor of the Government.
Without disparaging counsel in this nationwide effort,3 this is a colossal waste, a squandering, of precious judicial energy of at least 18 to 21 Judges at a time in which there is great concern over the capacity of the Federal Appellate System to handle the *37ever-growing case load.4
Considering the likelihood that this scenario might be repeated, action by the Congress or the Judiciary are both imperative. Fortunately, there is a model of Congressional-Judicial collaboration in the establishment and operation of the multi-district panel. 28 U.S.C. § 1407.
Valuable as “ventilation” by the Courts of Appeals may occasionally be to the Supreme Court in its equally taxing role, what we have here is not ventilation. Rather, the Federal Judiciary is windswept by this hurricane.

.Dewees v. Commissioner, 870 F.2d 21 (1st Cir.1989).
Killingsworth v. Commissioner, 864 F.2d 1214 (5th Cir.1989).
Keats v. U.S., 865 F.2d 86 (6th Cir.1988).
Ratliff v. Commissioner, 865 F.2d 97 (6th Cir.1989).
Yosha v. Commissioner, 861 F.2d 494 (7th Cir.1988).
Keane v. Commissioner, 865 F.2d 1088 (9th Cir.1989).
Kirchman v. Commissioner, 862 F.2d 1486 (11th Cir.1989).

. Estimating the burden on each of the other five Courts of Appeals, what has occurred in the First Circuit is likely typical of the others. The initial briefs totalled over 120 pages, not including 85 pages of the Tax Court’s opinion and supplemental briefs of 30 pages which were brought about by the order of November 28, 1989, to respond to a 16-page hypothetical. This was followed by Judge Breyer’s 50-page opinion for us.

. Collectively, the cases are reported to involve $100 million in lost revenues to the Government or, conversely, to the taxpayers. Also, lurking *37in the background are 25,000 individual taxpayers’ claims in related situations.

. See the one and only ever conference of all United States Circuit Judges held in Washington, D.C. (Oct. 23-26, 1988). See also Federal Courts Study Act, Pub.L. No. 100-702, §§ 102-09, 102 Stat. 4644-45 (1988) (establishing the Federal Courts Study Committee).