- 9 - his supervisor, Honolulu District Counsel William A. Sims (Sims)), entered into secret settlements with Luis DeCastro (DeCastro), counsel for test case petitioners John R. and Maydee Thompson (the Thompsons). The financial terms of the final settlement were much more advantageous to the Thompsons than the settlements generally made available to other petitioner participants in the Kersting project.7 The final settlement with the Thompsons was intended to provide refunds of tax and interest paid by the Thompsons under a prior settlement, plus interest thereon, that were to be used--and the bulk of the refunds was used--to pay DeCastro’s fees for providing the appearance of his independent representation of the Thompsons at the trial of the test cases. After this Court upheld respondent’s determinations and entered decisions in favor of respondent in all the test cases, see Dixon v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1991-614 (Dixon II), respondent’s senior management discovered the settlements, moved this Court to vacate the decisions (including the decisions in the Thompsons’ cases) that had not already been appealed to the 7One nontest case petitioner, Denis Alexander, in exchange for his acting as a witness and serving as an undeclared consultant to McWade during the original trial of the test cases, as described in Dixon III at Findings of Fact V.B. and VI.F., received a settlement even more favorable than that afforded the Thompsons. Although the Court of Appeals in Dixon V noted Alexander’s settlement, the Court of Appeals did not rely on or refer to that settlement in formulating the sanction to be imposed by its mandates.Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
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