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impediment that equitable recoupment is designed to circumvent)
must be given a strict application, and the equities are
unavailing. See Commissioner v. Lundy, 516 U.S. 235 (1996).
Thus, this Court was barred from holding that Lundy overpaid his
income taxes even if his claim for refund would have been timely
in a District Court. See id. at 251-253 (majority op.), 253-254,
263 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Also, Lundy lost even though it
was clear that Lundy and his wife had substantially overpaid
their income taxes. See id. at 237. Lundy did not involve the
staleness, missing documents, and faded memories that statutes of
limitations are generally established to guard against. The
majority of the Supreme Court determined that there was no room
for legal fictions suggested by Justices Thomas and Stevens, the
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, or Lundy's counsel, to
correct this obvious injustice, and the Government was permitted
to hold onto the Lundys' overpaid taxes solely because of the
text of the then-applicable statute of limitations. Of course,
Lundy’s situation does not fit into the current mold of equitable
recoupment. The relevance of Lundy to our discussion is the
Supreme Court’s focus on the details of statutory grants and
limitations of power and jurisdiction, and that Court’s
reluctance to modify the strictness of the statute even to
correct an obvious injustice.
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