U.S. Tax Court Judge Mark Holmes on Estate of Petter v. Comm’r
KYEstates issued a high-stakes challenge here in our discussion of the taxpayer FLP win in Estate of Petter v. Comm’r, T.C. Memo. 2009-280, 2009 WL 4598137 (U.S. Tax Ct. 2009). We said:
Count not your day a loss: you have now read the phrase glommed onto in a Federal court’s opinion. Find that phrase in another published Federal court decision predating the Petter opinion and KYEstates will happily buy you lunch if you are local, or if you are not, send you a gift card from the local independently-owned coffee shop nearest you.
Friday afternoon was shaping up to be the end of a relatively quiet day, when what should appear in the KYEstates email [carter {at} kyestates {dot} com] but a message from Judge Mark Holmes of the U.S. Tax Court (who wrote the Petter opinion).
We post Judge Holmes’ email with his permission:
Dear Mr. Ruml:
Volume 98 of CCH’s TCMs came out today, which I use as my opportunity to update citations on my opinion list, and indulge my vanity by googling to see if anyone’s noticed. Thank you for your kind attention to Petter. No hope of a comment from me on a case, but I must respond to your reward offer for prior citations to the phrase “glommed onto.” Please see Johnson v. Evanston, 250 F.3d 560, 562 (7th Cir. 2001) (Judge Easterbrook, who also works “swag” into the case.) (Article III judges seem to have more fun.) (But I am the first Tax Court judge to use the indispensable “snafu” in a published opinion.)
The free lunch is probably more valuable, but Judge Goeke grew up in Louisville, so he usually gets to return home when Tax Court needs to visit Kentucky. But there are a good number of independent coffee shops here in DC. Let me know if I’m the winner and I’ll tell you where to send my prize.
M. Holmes
Judge Holmes was the first claimant for the “Glom On” Prize, and (naturally) his citation to Johnson checked out. Accordingly, KYEstates is proud to award the “Glom On” Prize to our distinguished reader! For those who wonder, Judge Holmes has selected this fine establishment for his prize, notwithstanding his appointment to the Tax Court by President George W. Bush. At KYEstates, we take this as an indicator that bipartisanship lives, although it may not signify too much unless and until this business idea gets franchised and goes national.
Readers, as you can tell, having the opportunity to award the Petter “Glom On” Prize and associated bragging rights to the very same judge who wrote the opinion itself made Friday a really exciting and fun day for KYEstates. We look forward to awarding prizes in future challenges – in the meantime, thank you, Judge Holmes, for getting us off to such a strong start!
Even without the award of the “Glom On” prize, there is still other timely, interesting news to report: as evidenced here, Governor Beshear signed Kentucky UPMIFA into law on Thursday, March 25. (KYEstates previously covered Kentucky UPMIFA here.) On top of the passage of HB 188 (covered here), UPMIFA’s enactment makes this an excellent legislative session for the Kentucky T&E Community. (Readers, that may not make up for the West Virginia game, but at least it’s something. Aside from that debacle, we hope you had a terrific weekend and wish you the best for the week ahead.)