Court Opinion

ID: 9422045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:00.34133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:42.641077
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
dissenting.
I would dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted.
The petition urged the substantial question of retro-activity in the Commissioner’s exercise of his lawmaking power, in that he attacked in court a prior interpretation by him of the taxing statutes whereby the tax now claimed *713was not due. As the case finally was presented here no substantial question of retroactivity was presented. Insofar as the retroactivity initially asserted depended upon the reliance of the petitioners, that is apparently governed by § 1108 (b) of the Revenue Act of 1926, 44 Stat. 114, controlling excise taxation, and is in any event not now in issue, for the petitioners stipulated in the trial court and reiterated here that the Commissioner was in no way “estopped” to attack the invalidity of the ruling as petitioners and the District Court construed it. Insofar as the retroactivity asserted was the more general unfairness of a change in the Commissioner’s interpretation, it cannot be presented in this case because from the start it has been manifest that the ruling is, to say the least, ambiguous (the Commissioner tried to clarify it in 1957) and reasonably susceptible of both interpretations urged for it, so that any judicial determination of its meaning was bound to affect some taxpayers retroactively. Nor was or is there any basis in the record for saying that the Court of Appeals’ rejection of the horsepower test in toto was more severely retroactive in its effect than either construction of the ruling might have been.
The only other contention presented for review is the substantive statutory determination of the Court of Appeals, as to which that court apparently failed to give due weight to the interpretative function of the Commissioner. In light of the confused and cloudy record in this case, this failure cannot be said to be clearly presented since the Commissioner’s approach has resulted in a rule which the Court of Appeals found to be “inconclusive and uncertain.” Had all this been clear from the start, it would have been apparent, to me at least, that, assuming the Court of Appeals to be wrong, there was not such a departure “from the accepted and usual course of judicial proceedings ... as to call for an exercise of this court’s power of supervision.” Rule 19, par. 1 (b).
*714Moreover, this litigation bears many of the earmarks of a feigned suit. Despite the desire of the parties to “test” a question of law, we ought to avoid adjudication in a case with so checkered a course of positions taken by the parties where the particular controversy may well be less than real. The consent required by § 6416 (a) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, a precondition for this action, was obtained from the attorney and auditor of the petitioners. It is not too broad an inference to say that the petitioners were, in effect, writing their own consent for bringing this suit. Without further proof, such sales and consent hardly establish the immediate interest of the petitioners in the outcome of this lawsuit, i. e., money loss due to an illegal exaction, not some other suit sought to be made to turn upon it, which is a requisite to adjudication. Cf. Atherton Mills v. Johnston, 259 U. S. 13, 15. Responsibility for the confusing shifts of position during litigation which characterize this record may not unfairly be attributed to the extent to which this action was contrived, and to the stipulations affecting the really substantial interests which were apparently the chief concern for using this action as a pilot litigation. Whether or not a case is feigned must ultimately turn on inferences from the record and history of a litigation. The appearance that it may be, even if not demonstrably calling for dismissal of the proceeding, ought to make the Court doubly unwilling to give its judgment on the substantive questions to be dug out of so dubious a litigation on such a record.
I would dismiss.