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each driver-employee.28
With respect to petitioner’s argument that in Transport
Labor I the Court did not consider the precedential effect of
Beech Trucking Co., petitioner asserts:
The Court made a “manifest error of law” when it
failed to follow the binding precedent of Beech Truck-
ing Co. v. Commissioner, 118 T.C. 428 (2002), in accor-
dance with the Court’s ruling in Boyd v. Commissioner,
122 T.C. 305 (2004). * * *
In Boyd v. Commissioner, the Court described the
[sic] “the analysis and reasoning” in Beech Trucking
Co. as precedent binding on this Court under the doc-
trine of stare decisis. * * *
On the record before us, we reject petitioner’s assertion.
As the Court stated in Transport Labor I, the determination
of whether an individual is an employer is a fact-intensive
inquiry. Id. at 184. Application of the common-law employment
factors may produce different results in different cases that may
appear to be facially similar. For example, in Weber v.
Commissioner, 60 F.3d 1104 (4th Cir. 1995), affg. 103 T.C. 378
(1994), application of the common-law employment factors resulted
in a finding that a Methodist minister was the employee of the
United Methodist Church. In contrast, in Alford v. United
States, 116 F.3d 334 (8th Cir. 1997), and Shelley v.
28To the extent other witnesses whom the Court found to be
credible and reliable testified regarding matters about which Mr.
Ankerfelt also testified, the Court based its findings upon the
testimony of such other witnesses, as well as on the parties’
stipulations of fact and documentary evidence in the record, and
not on Mr. Ankerfelt’s testimony.
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