Court Opinion

ID: 9443361
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:18:25.910646+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:27.715295
License: Public Domain

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part).
From internal stoppage in the official machinery constituted to provide a suitor with his day in court, the courts usually have found a way to leave a litigant in the same situation as if that machinery had normally operated. In most instances this has been accomplished by treating the result which normal operation would have produced as having constructively occurred. But it is to be noted that this constructive concept has been limited in application to operational failures occasioned by official fault or shortcoming in the constituted machinery and does not embrace the effect of the play of extraneous forces or collateral incidents.
I do not believe that the Post Office Department can be regarded as part of the constituted machinery for making resort to the Tax Court. Neither the statutes, 26 U.S.C.A. Internal Revenue Code, §§ 272(a) (1), 732, nor the rules of the Tax Court purport to constitute a use of the mails as any part of the official channel for filing a petition for redetermination in that court. In this situation, I am unable to view a litigant’s use of the mails for this purpose as being any different in its nature or consequence than would be his use of express service, freight service, messenger service, personal transporting, or any other means, in the transmittal of his petition to1 the Tax Court for filing.
Besides this, the doctrine that a taxpayer is entitled to be relieved of any risk to his day in court from fault or negligence on the part of employees of the Post Office Department, where he has chosen to use the mails to make filing of a petition in the Tax Court, is to me fraught with implications, which I am unable here to take the time to attempt to project. To give only one readily occurring example — if delay in the filing of a petition for redetermination, occasioned toy fault or negligence of the Post Office Department in the handling of such a petition in the mails, cannot affect the jurisdiction of the Tax Court, then logically litigants against the Government in other courts — the Supreme Court, the Courts of Appeals, the District Court, etc. —would seem necessarily to be entitled to the same kind of jurisdictional protection in those courts.
I am of the opinion therefore that, if relief can at all be granted in the present situation, it can only be done on the basis of some internal failure of operation having occurred in the machinery of the Tax Court, set up to make possible the filing of *194a petition for redetermination within the object of the statute. In other words, it must be possible for us to find, from direct testimony or on circumstances, that there had been some breakdown in the processes of that machinery, which was responsible for the taxpayer’s petition not having been formally filed and docketed until February 6, 1951, whereas, if the operation of the machinery had been normal, such filing and docketing would have previously occurred and should therefore be constructively regarded as having been so done. I feel, however, that the record before us does warrant such a finding, and it is on this basis that I concur in the reversal of the Tax Court’s order dismissing the taxpayer’s petition.
The Tax Court treated the filing stamp and docket entry of the Clerk’s office as conclusive that the petition of the taxpayer had not in any way come into the hands of the Clerk’s office until February 6, 1951. But, as the majority opinion points out, there was no testimony that the petition was in fact first received on that date, and judicial decisions in related situations make clear that the formal filing and docketing of a petition in the Tax Court will not necessarily represent the date of legal receiving, if the receipt is one which does not automatically channelize itself into the court’s mailing room routine processes. See e. g. Palcar Real Estate Co. v. Commissioner, 8 Cir., 131 F.2d 210, 213, and McCord v. Commissioner, 74 App.D.C. 369, 123 F.2d 164.
It seems to me a reasonable inference from the circumstances of the record that the petition here left Dallas on January 30th and came into the Post Office at Washington, on January 31st. Apparently it was taken out of the channel of immediate regular delivery in order to permit it to be stamped with the notation “received in bad condition.” But it would in usual course have gone back promptly into the channel of regular delivery, unless its condition was such that the Post Office Department would not at all undertake to make delivery of it except upon personal call or pick-up by the addressee. In the latter event, notice would, of course, go out to the addressee. The consuming of 7 days in either of these processes is so unusual as to give rise to no conviction of likelihood or probability of it having occurred. It therefore seems a reasonable inference (1) that the petition was taken to the Tax Court before February 6th and that, because of its condition or for other reason, it was not. made subj ect to the routine handling of the mailing room, or (2) that notice was sent out by the Post Office, which made possible the picking-up of the petition before February 6th, but that, because of the departure from regular routine involved, this was not done by the mailing room until February 6th.
The first situation would of course plainly be one in which there had been a receiving and so a right to have a filing made before February 6th. And to me, the second situation also should be regarded as one of legal receiving before February 6th, within the doctrine of constructive operation of official machinery referred to above. I do not mean to imply that the mailing room necessarily had the official responsibility of calling for or picking up petitions, for that question does not here require consideration. But I entertain no doubt that, if it at all engaged in the practice as part of its processes, it owed the duty of doing so with proper official diligence and not merely at its own convenience.
And so I think that the Tax Court should have held that there had been such a receiving of the taxpayer’s petition within 90 days as to provide the court with jurisdiction to make a redetermination of the assessed taxes. Where the right to a day in court is at stake, the judicial approach should be one of attempt to accord the right, if this can legitimately and reasonably be done, and not one of attempt to deny it through unnecessary resolution, unless such a denial is either legally or equitably compelled. I believe that the present situation, on the basis which I have stated, is one where the right can legitimately and reasonably be accorded and where certainly there is no reason equitably to look for a way to deny it.