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the plaintiff’s successful, but belated, challenge of the
legality of the excise tax. O’Brien v. United States, 582 F.
Supp. at 206. The District Court distinguished Ford v. United
States, supra, finding it not in point for reasons that it does
not make very clear and finding the case before it
indistinguishable from Bull. Id. Although the Court of Appeals
was somewhat guarded in its language, it does not seem to have
disagreed. It reversed solely because of the lack of an
independent basis for jurisdiction, the period of limitations
having expired on the income tax refund claim that was the
subject of the taxpayer's lawsuit. O’Brien v. United States, 766
F.2d at 1048-1051. Even if the reversal of the District Court on
this ground caused what the Court of Appeals said about the
single-transaction issue to be dictum, all this supports
petitioner’s view of the issue in our case, which is similar to
the facts in O’Brien.
Respondent asserts that Minskoff v. United States, 349 F.
Supp. 1146 (S.D.N.Y. 1972), affd. per curiam 490 F.2d 1283 (2d
Cir. 1974), supports her view of the single-transaction
requirement. In that case, an estate brought a refund action
against the Government for recovery of estate tax on the
decedent’s interest in a corporation; the Government had
collected income tax in 1961 on the proceeds from the decedent’s
sale of his interest in the corporation in 1949, prior to his
death in 1950 (at trial, the Government was successful in proving
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