Court Opinion

ID: 9850880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:03:56.543253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:44.972437
License: Public Domain

SABERS, Justice
(dissenting).
I have no quarrel with the majority’s discussion of the continuing representation doctrine as it applies to accountant’s malpractice and statutes of limitation. However, it should not apply here because, from day one, Bosse knew exactly what he was doing. He was attempting to get by without paying the tax even though he knew he owed it and had *14collected it from the farmers. He even placed the money in his own “general accounts.”
The majority opinion says it best and makes it clear:
Bosse learned of this new tax, which was to commence in the second quarter of 1988, from a trade publication. Bosse collected the taxes from farmers starting April 1, 1988, and placed the money in Bosse’s general accounts. Bosse calculated the tax due based on his own records and collected the tax accordingly. Thereafter, he submitted his records to Accountants to prepare the relevant tax forms ...
Although Bosse collected the taxes on agricultural use for each of these three quarters, Accountants did not include them in Bosse’s quarterly returns. As a result, Bosse grossly underpaid the amount of federal tax due. In June 1991, Bosse received notice of an audit from the IRS.
The obvious reason that the accountants did not include these taxes in Bosse’s quarterly returns was that Bosse withheld that information from them. He did not tell them that there was a new federal fuel tax, that he learned of it from a trade publication, that he calculated it and collected it from the farmers or that he placed the money in his own general accounts. The accountants’ oversight or neglect has little or nothing to do with this situation.
As I stated in Dacy v. Gors, 471 N.W.2d 576, 581 (S.D.1991) (Sabers, Justice, dissenting): “A basic premise of the law is that a person cannot profit from [his] own wrong.” Here, Bosse is attempting to force his accountants to help him pay the fuel taxes that he legally owes. I’ll have no part of his scheme. He legally owes the taxes, the interest and the penalties thereon because he knowingly withheld the taxes from the IRS and caused this interest and these penalties. If the law helps him get by with this, then the law is an “ass.” *
Bosse testified to his conduct concerning the new tax. He cannot cláim a more favorable version of the facts than his own testimony. Miller v. Stevens, 63 S.D. 10, 256 N.W. 152, 155 (1934). The trial court reached the right result for the wrong reason. Kehn v. Hoeksema, 524 N.W.2d 879, 881 (S.D.1994). We should affirm.
WUEST, Retired J., joins this dissent.

 As in Oliver Twist, if the law supposes that a wife acts at the direction of her husband, the law is "a[n] ass — a[n] idiot.” Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, Chapter 51 (1890).