Court Opinion

ID: 9461805
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:25:13.992669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:16.560608
License: Public Domain

TONE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The effect of the court’s holding is that if for any reason a judicial proceeding to enforce a special estate tax lien is commenced but not brought to a successful conclusion before the. expiration of the 10-year period, the lien is dissolved and the proceeding goes for naught. If the court is right that would have been the result in Detroit Bank v. United States, 317 U.S. 329, 63 S.Ct. 37, 87 L.Ed. 493 (1943), and the four other federal cases cited by the majority in which judgments were entered more than 10 years after the death of the decedent, if anyone had thought to raise the point raised here. (In Kaufman v. Herter, 24 Misc.2d 187, 194 N.Y.S.2d 848 (Sup.Ct. 1959), a partition proceeding in a state trial court in which the government intervened, it does not appear from the opinion that the government asserted its special estate tax lien claim in any legal proceeding within the 10-year period; the government was held to have a valid assessment lien for the balance of the tax due, with interest.)
I doubt that Congress intended to leave the enforceability of the government’s lien dependent on how fast litigation to enforce it can be brought to termination, thereby rewarding the dilatory defendant. Relieving the title searcher from the need to check the indexes of cases is not a sufficient justification for a rule that produces such eccentric results. Nor is the availability of the assessment lien alternative, with its shorter limitation period. It may well be that the assessment lien will normally be adequate if the tax collector is diligent. But section 6324(a) was intended as an alternative, or backup, means of protecting the revenue and should be given reasonable scope.
The majority’s analogy to the traditional judgment lien does not go very far. Such a lien, unlike the federal special estate tax lien, can usually be kept alive beyond the statutory period by an action to revive the judgment. E. g., Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 77, § 1 et seq. (1973) (which is the modern version of the statute referred to in Smith v. Toman, 368 Ill. 414, 14 N.E.2d 479 (1938), cited by the majority); Motel v. Andracki, 299 Ill.App. 166, 170, 19 N.E.2d 832, 834 (1st Dist. 1939). Thus the legislature provides a procedure by which the judgment lien holder can preserve his lien until an action to enforce it is concluded. Some courts have given as a reason for not permitting an extension of a judgment lien beyond the statutory period the fact that the judgment creditor has an adequate alternative remedy because he could keep his lien alive by renewing or reviving the judgment. See, e. g., Trapnall v. Richardson, Waterman & Co., 13 Ark. 543 (1853); Depositors’ Holding Co. v. Winschel, 60 N.D. 71, 232 N.W. 599 (1930); 77 A.L.R.2d 1067-1068. Con*236gress’ omission to provide a procedure for keeping the special estate tax lien alive until litigation to enforce the lien is concluded can be interpreted as indicating that body’s view that such a provision is unnecessary because even without it the lien survives until the litigation is concluded.
I would hold that the special estate tax lien may be enforced by the government in an action commenced within 10 years of death.