- 7 - The Court of Appeals vacated this Court’s decisions in the test cases and remanded them for “an evidentiary hearing to determine the full extent of the admitted wrong done by the government trial lawyers.” Id. In response to the direction of the Court of Appeals to consider on the merits all motions of intervention filed by interested parties, this Court ordered that the cases of 10 nontest case petitioners (hereafter, the participating nontest case petitioners), including the Adairs and the four Jones petitioners,4 be consolidated with the remaining test cases for purposes of the evidentiary hearing. On the basis of the record developed at the evidentiary hearing, the Court held that the misconduct of the Government attorneys in the trial of the test cases did not cause a structural defect in the trial but rather resulted in harmless error. See Dixon v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1999-101 (Dixon III). However, the Court imposed sanctions against respondent, holding that Kersting program participants who had not had final decisions entered in their cases would be relieved of liability for (1) the interest component of the addition to tax for negligence under former section 6653(a), and (2) the incremental interest attributable to the increased rate prescribed in former section 6621(c). 4 The remaining five participating nontest case petitioners have been represented by Robert Patrick Sticht (Sticht).Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011