Court Opinion

ID: 9884907
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 03:23:26.412608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:42.149454
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE SCHAEFER, dissenting: In my opinion the appellate court arrived at the correct result in this case. The heart of the opinion of this court which reverses the appellate court is the following statement: “The statute provides for a ‘market value’ test. (In re Estate of Graves, 242 Ill. 212; Hanberg v. Morgan, 263 Ill. 616.)” Neither of the two cases cited is concerned with the method of valuing assets, and I would respectfully suggest that the basic assertion does not accurately describe the statute. The word “market” in the statutory phrase “market value” was not used by the legislature to describe reported market quotations. Those same words are commonly used in describing the just compensation to be paid to one whose land, for which there is no market quotation, is taken by eminent domain. These words, and the other words that are used in the statute, are only aids to the ascertainment of the actual, realistic value of the property in question. It is that value with which the legislature and this court have heretofore been concerned. Stock market quotations are not absolute determinants of that value. They may be, in the absence of extraordinary circumstances, “a fair and safe guide,” but other relevant factors are not to be disregarded. So it was held in the early days of the inheritance tax. Repeatedly, in the leading case of Walker v. People (1901), 192 Ill. 106, there is an insistence upon actual value. The court there said: “The Inheritance Tax law provides the method and machinery for the valuation of property coming within the operation of the law. Section 1 of the statute uses the expression ‘clear market value of such property received by each person.’ Section 11 uses the phrases, ‘value,’ ‘fair market value,’ and ‘cash value.’ In arriving at the fair value of property, the appraiser, under the act, has to be guided by the fair market value thereof, and in ascertaining the same is authorized to call witnesses for that purpose. Under the act, the appraiser and the county judge and the county court are not limited in the valuation of property to the market quotations of the same, but for the purpose of finding the fair cash value of the same, they may use the quotations of the same on the public exchanges, private sales of such property, testimony as to the actual value of the same, and their own knowledge of the subject matter.” 192 Ill. at 110. In other words, in the language of the Federal estate tax regulation and of Judge Swan writing for himself and Judges Learned Hand and Medina in Bankers Trust Company v. United States (2d Cir. 1960), 284 F.2d 537, 538, a case involving a similar problem, “[a] 11 relevant facts and elements of value” are to be considered. (See also, In re Estate of Rosenfeld (1965), 62 Cal. 2d 432, 398 P.2d 783, 42 Cal. Rptr. 447; In re Estate of Behm (1964), 14 N.Y.2d 826, 251 N.Y.S.2d 475, 200 N.E.2d 457.) In the present case the appellate court refused to close its eyes to the most obvious and most relevant fact about the actual value of these bonds, and I think its judgment should be affirmed. MR. JUSTICE KLUCZYNSKI joins in this dissent.