Anthony and Lena C. Andre - Page 7

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          premature requests are “related forward” to the first date on               
          which they could be made.  The best known is Federal Rule of                
          Appellate Procedure 4(a), which requires a notice of appeal to be           
          filed “within 30 days after the judgment or order appealed from             
          is entered.”  That rule was amended in 1979 to allow the relation           
          forward of prematurely filed appeals to the date of entry.  Fed.            
          R. App. P. 4(a)(2).                                                         
               The Advisory Committee Notes make clear, though, that even             
          before the 1979 amendment, such premature notices were effective.           
          Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(2), 28 U.S.C. app. at 587 (2000).  The                 
          consensus view was that “unlike a tardy notice of appeal, certain           
          premature notices do not prejudice the appellee and that the                
          technical defect of prematurity therefore should not be allowed             
          to extinguish an otherwise proper appeal.”  FirsTier Mortgage Co.           
          v. Investors Mortgage Ins. Co., 498 U.S. 269, 273 (1991).  This             
          lenient reading of the rule’s language “was intended to protect             
          the unskilled litigant who files a notice of appeal from a                  
          decision that he reasonably but mistakenly believes to be a final           
          judgment, while failing to file a notice of appeal from the                 
          actual final judgment.  Id. at 276.                                         
               An even closer analogy is rooted in section 6330 itself.               
          Section 6330(d)(1) governs the case of a taxpayer who appeals               
          from the Commissioner’s notice of determination after a CDP                 







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