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suffering, emotional distress, harm to reputation, or
other consequential damages * * *.
Id. at 239. Because the taxpayers’ remedies under title VII were
limited to wages on which they otherwise would have been taxed,
the Court held that title VII’s sole remedial focus was the award
of back wages and did not redress a tortlike personal injury
within the meaning of section 104(a)(2) and the applicable
regulations. See id. at 241. As such, the settlements received
by the taxpayers pursuant to their title VII claims were not
excludable from gross income under section 104(a)(2).
Similar to the taxpayers in United States v. Burke, supra,
petitioner brought a claim under title VII against her employer.
Since the damages available to petitioner as a title VII claimant
consisted only of wages,3 which would otherwise be taxable, the
$150,000 recovery received by petitioner as partial payment of
her title VII judgment does not constitute “damages received * *
* on account of personal injuries”. Thus, under the reasoning of
3 In 1991, the Civil Rights Act, Pub. L. 102-166, 105 Stat.
1071 (1991), expanded the damages available under title VII and
created a right of recovery for compensatory and punitive damages
for certain intentional violations of title VII. In Landgraf v.
USI Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244 (1994), the Supreme Court held that
the 1991 amendments to the Civil Rights Act did not apply
retroactively. Because petitioner’s title VII suit was filed in
1990 and the conduct underlying the suit occurred from 1981 to
1984, the application of sec. 104(a)(2) to any amounts received
from petitioner’s title VII claim must be considered in light of
the Civil Rights Act as it existed prior to the 1991 amendments.
See Clark v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1997-156. In any event,
there is no evidence that petitioner sought in her Complaint or
was awarded damages on account of personal injury.
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