Court Opinion

ID: 9459232
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:14:05.529536+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:04.651441
License: Public Domain

SIMPSON, Circuit Judge, with whom JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge, and WISDOM, GOLDBERG and GODBOLD, Circuit Judges,
join, dissenting in part and specially concurring in part:
I
I respectfully dissent from Part I of the Court’s en banc opinion on rehearing,. ádhering to the views expressed in Part VI, pages 919-921, of my opinion for the original panel, Lucia v. United States, 5 Cir. 1971, 447 F.2d 912. This viewpoint is based upon the premise that Marchetti,1 Grosso,2 and United States Coin and Currency,3 introduced “an entirely new constitutional dimension to the administration of the federal wagering excise tax scheme”4 and the conclusion that “because of this radical alteration of the constitutional environment * * * decisions pre-Marchetti *578and Grosso dealing with injunctive relief against wagering excise tax assessments ■may not be relied upon to dispose of the issue presented here.” 5
The panel attempt to assay the effect of this new constitutional dimension on the issues presented by Lucia’s appeal led to this result: “ * * * that Lucia may not be deprived of the defense of the statute of limitations for failure to file the required federal wagering excise tax returns”,6 because of his exercise of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
In any accommodation between statute and the Constitution, I remain convinced that the statute in question, Title 26, U. S.C., Section 6501(c)(3), must give way to the constitutional privilege explicated in Grosso and given retroactive application by United States Coin and Currency. This conclusion may not be entirely satisfactory. The en banc majority rejects it.
But my opinion for the panel majority at least recognized and met head-on the problem of the application of the constitutional privilege as expanded by Grosso in the framework of the statutorily required filing of excise tax returns and the statutes of limitation. It seems to me that the position Judge Roney expresses for the majority of the en banc Court fails realistically to come to grips with the problem, in the same way that his dissent to the panel majority opinion did. Both opinions 7 rely on as controlling numerous pre-Grosso cases applying time tested rubrics of voluntary reporting and statute of limitation requirements. No meaningful accommodation into this framework of the Grosso principle emerges. This approach is the basis for holding that the statute of limitations cannot begin to run until a return is filed.
The majority is thus led inexorably to the remarkable conclusion at the end of Part I of the opinion, page 572, supra (page 8 of the typewritten copy):
“We hold that the period of limitations for the assessment of wagering excise taxes does not commence to run until a return has been filed, even though to require a return would violate the taxpayer’s constitutional right against self-incrimination. No return having been filed by Lucia for the period involved, the statute of limitations does not bar the assessment.” (Emphasis supplied.)
Faced with the problem of how to deal with the constitutional privilege as applied by the Supreme Court to federal wagering excise tax returns, the majority baldly asserts that the return must be filed even though in violation of the constitutional privilege. Absent such filing the statute of limitations is forever tolled. I should suppose, to the contrary, that when Title 26, Section 6501(c)(3) collides with the constitutional privilege, the statute, not the Constitution, must give ground. I adhere to the original panel solution as preferable on logical as well as legal grounds to the majority’s startling conclusion that the statute takes precedence over the constitutional privilege.8
*579II
As to Part II of the majority opinion I concur in the result only: remand for a determination by a trial on the merits of the issue of whether the government’s assessment is as charged by Lucia, “arbitrary, capricious, and without factual foundation”.
For the majority of the original panel, I held in Part V of the panel opinion, 447 F.2d 918-919, that our decisions in Pinder9 and Mersel10 were indistinguishable on principle from the case at bar, and precluded the attempted arbitrariness attack on the assessment. The Second Circuit decision in Pizzarello v. United States, 2 Cir. 1969, 408 F.2d 579, was held to conflict with our Pinder and Mersel decisions.
The majority, by reasoning I am unable to follow, concludes that Pinder and Mersel are really not in conflict with Pizzarello after all and we are thus free to direct the lower court to apply Pizza-rello. Foreknowledge that this was the law would have simplified my task in writing for the original panel, but I deemed that we were restricted by controlling precedent.
My disposition would be to treat this problem by saying straight out that to the extent they conflict with Pizzarello, Pinder and Mersel are receded from. This action is appropriate for the en banc Court, whereas the original panel felt bound by these prior decisions.
The result, directions to the lower court to apply the teachings of Pizzarel-lo to the facts here, is the same in either event. For this reason, I concur in the result reached in Part II of the en banc majority opinion, although I would reach that result by a different route.

. Marchetti v. United States, 1968, 390 U.S. 39, 88 S.Ct. 697, 19 L.Ed.2d 889.

. Grosso v. United States, 1968, 390 U.S. 62, 88 S.Ct. 709, 19 L.Ed.2d 906.

. United States v. United States Coin and Currency, 1971, 401 U.S. 715, 91 S.Ct. 1041, 28 L.Ed.2d 434.

. 447 F.2d at p. 922.

. 447 F.2d at p. 922.

. 447 F.2d at p. 923.

. Compare 447 F.2d, pages 923-924, and cases there cited with the text of pages 568 and 569 of the en banc majority opinion and cases cited in the supporting notes.

. From a practical standpoint, the effect of the original panel decision presents no particularly alarming prospects The Secretary would have three years after such a raid as occurred here within which to make his calculations and execute a return as provided by applying Title 26, U.S.C., Section 6020. I suggest that in the present ease this could as well have been accomplished in 1965, within three years of the raid, as in 1969, seven years thereafter.

. Pinder v. United States, 5 Cir.1964, 330 F.2d 119.

. Mersel v. United States, 5 Cir.1969, 420 F.2d 517.