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v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1989-630. In Diego Investors IV, the
Court refused to allow an expert selected and paid for by the
Commissioner to testify as the taxpayers' witness. The taxpayers
in Diego Investors IV sought to call the Commissioner's expert to
enhance their tactical position by using selected portions of a
report pertaining to sales data while refuting the remainder of
the expert's unfavorable conclusions. Although Diego Investors
IV is distinguishable from the instant case in numerous ways, one
critical distinction is that in the instant case, respondent has
gained no tactical advantage by adopting some of the information
in the estate's expert's reports.
In the instant case, the estate provided the Holden I, II,
and Cardenas reports to respondent as evidence of the values of
MVN and MVS, as well as to provide the facts and data underlying
those values. The estate now seeks to exclude those reports
because they believe that if they are successful, we shall
conclude that Mr. Marx's reports are invalid based on the
language in Mr. Marx's disclaimer. However, it appears that the
estate failed to appreciate that the use of expert testimony is
within the sound discretion of the trial judge. The test for
admissibility of expert testimony is whether the testimony will
aid the trier of fact to understand the evidence. See Fed. R.
Evid. 702; United States v. Amaral, 488 F.2d 1148, 1152 (9th Cir.
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