Marriott International Resorts, L.P. v. United States

61 Fed. Cl. 411, 94 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 5312, 2004 U.S. Claims LEXIS 190, 2004 WL 1708972
CourtUnited States Court of Federal Claims
DecidedJuly 29, 2004
DocketNos. 01-256-T, 01-257-T
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 61 Fed. Cl. 411 (Marriott International Resorts, L.P. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Federal Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Marriott International Resorts, L.P. v. United States, 61 Fed. Cl. 411, 94 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 5312, 2004 U.S. Claims LEXIS 190, 2004 WL 1708972 (uscfc 2004).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

LETTOW, Judge.

These consolidated tax cases are before the Court on plaintiffs’ Motion to Compel Defendant to Produce Documents Withheld or Redacted on the Grounds of Executive Privilege, filed on February 26, 2004. Plaintiffs, Marriott International Resorts, L.P. (“Partnership”) and Marriott International JBS Corporation (“JBS”) (collectively “Marriott”),1 have brought this case seeking a readjustment of the Partnership’s allowable tax deductions for the 1994 tax year. Marriott challenges a determination by the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) that certain contingent liabilities derived from short-sale transactions in 1994 should have been subtracted from the Partnership’s tax basis, thus increasing the Partnership’s taxable income for that year by approximately $73 million. In the course of discovery, Marriott propounded requests for documents. In response to the requests, the government produced many documents but withheld or redacted 339 documents, consisting of over 4,000 pages of material, that it identified as responsive to Marriott’s requests but protected from disclosure by “executive privilege.” Marriott filed the pending motion to compel to challenge the government’s assertion of privilege regarding these documents. The motion has been fully briefed, and a hearing was held on May 26, 2004. For the reasons set forth below, Marriott’s motion to compel is granted in part and denied in part.

BACKGROUND2

In 1994, Marriott engaged in two short-sale transactions of U.S. Treasury securities with the intention of hedging its exposure to interest-rate risks related to a pool of fixed-rate mortgages that Marriott had obtained in [413]*413the course of conducting its time-share business. Pls.’ Mot. to Compel at 5; Compl. No. 01-257-T ¶¶ 13-14. As a result of these transactions, Marriott was obligated to return the securities involved at some point in the future, after the close of the tax year. When Marriott filed its tax returns for 1994, it did not subtract the resulting “contingent liability” from the Partnership’s tax basis.3 On February 2, 2001, the IRS issued to Marriott a Notice of Final Partnership Administrative Adjustment (“Adjustment”) in which the IRS determined that Marriott “realized a gain of $1,757,378 rather than a loss of $71,189,461” and, accordingly, that Marriott’s taxable income for the tax year ended December 30, 1994, should have been increased by $72,946,839. Compl. No. 01-257-T, Ex. A at 6.4

Marriott filed suit in this Court in April 2001, challenging the IRS’s determination in the Adjustment and averring that the short-sale transactions gave rise to a “contingent” rather than a “fixed” obligation that should not be considered a “liability” for purposes of determining the Partnership’s tax basis pursuant to Section 752 of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U.S.C. § 752.5 The statute does not provide a definition for the term “liabilities.” In 1988, the IRS promulgated temporary regulations, 26 C.F.R. § 1.752-1T (1989), that, by means of definitions and ex-ampies, treated obligations of the partnership as “liabilities” only to the extent they were payable in the relevant tax year. See 26 C.F.R. § 1.752-lT(d)(3)(E), (g) and (k)(Ex. 2). However, when the regulations were issued in their final form in 1991, they were greatly abbreviated, and no definition or explanation for “liabilities” was included. 26 C.F.R. § 1.752-1 (1992). Marriott alleges that prior to 1995, in Revenue Rulings directly addressing the issue, e.g., Rev. Rul. 88-77, 1988 WL 546796, the IRS consistently held that contingent obligations did not count as liabilities under Section 752. Pls.’ Mot. at 12 n. 8. With Rev. Rul. 95-26, 1995 WL 95470, however, Marriott contends that the IRS reversed itself on this issue, holding even a contingent obligation to be a “liability.” Id. at 7-10.

In short, Marriott argues that the relevant tax basis for 1994 should not have been adjusted by the amount of the liability in the manner that the IRS advocates. Compl. No. 01-257-T ¶ 35. Marriott asserts that its interpretation of Section 752 is supported by “decades” of practice by the IRS, Pls.’ Mot. at 6, and that the IRS in 1995 “reversed course and held that the obligation to close a short sale ... would nonetheless be treated as a partnership liability under [Internal Revenue] Code section 752.” Id. at 7-8.

[414]*414Underpinning Marriott’s case are its allegations that (1) at the time of the short-sale transactions at issue, the law with respect to the interpretation of the word “liabilities” in Section 752 was well established and justified Marriott’s treatment of the short-sale transactions on the Partnership’s 1994 tax returns, and (2) the IRS improperly chose in 1995 to reinterpret Section 752 without advance notice and to Marriott’s detriment. In pursuit of support for these allegations, Marriott on June 10, 2002, requested from the government all documents relied upon by the IRS “in formulating its position with respect to the definition of ‘liability’ in Treasury Regulations issued under [Internal Revenue] Code section 752 in 1988 and 1991 and various revenue rulings in which the IRS purported to define the term.” Pls.’ Mot. at 9-10. See also Pls.’ App. Ex. C, Tab 1, ¶¶ 20-21 (Pls.’ First Request for Production of Documents (June 10, 2002)).

In response to Marriott’s document requests, on July 18, 2002, the government produced some documents along with a forty-one page privilege log indicating documents that were being withheld or redacted under a claim of “executive privilege.” Pls.’ App. Ex. C, Tab 3. Six and one-half months later, the government provided an amended privilege log that was forty-seven pages in length. Id., Tab 10.6 A further two months later, on April 9, 2003, the government provided to Marriott a ninety-one page Declaration of Margo L. Stevens (“Declaration”) in support of its assertions of executive privilege. Pls.’ App. Ex. D. At the time she provided her Declaration, Ms. Stevens served as Assistant Chief Counsel (Disclosure and Privacy Law) in the Office of Associate Chief Counsel (Procedure and Administration), Office of Chief Counsel, IRS. Id. ¶ 1. In her Declaration, Ms. Stevens averred that she had “been delegated the authority to claim executive privilege on behalf of the [IRS] with respect to its documents or information in actions before this Court” pursuant to “Delegation Order No. 220 (Rev.3), 1997 WL 33479282, signed by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and effective April 16, 1997.” Id. ¶ 2. The Declaration sets out the standards applied by Ms. Stevens in reaching her decision to claim executive privilege, id. ¶¶ 2, 8-9, and identifies and explains the search methods used by attorneys for the IRS in locating and identifying documents the government wished, and still wishes, to withhold. Id. ¶¶ 5-6. The Declaration further describes each document or group of documents over which Ms. Stevens claims executive privilege, id.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Nippon Paper Industries USA Co., Ltd. v. United States
129 Fed. Cl. 76 (Federal Claims, 2016)
Confidential Informant 59-05071 v. United States
108 Fed. Cl. 121 (Federal Claims, 2012)
Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. v. United States
106 Fed. Cl. 571 (Federal Claims, 2012)
Ford Motor Co. v. United States
84 Fed. Cl. 168 (Federal Claims, 2008)
System Fuels, Inc. v. United States
73 Fed. Cl. 206 (Federal Claims, 2006)
Jade Trading, LLC v. United States
65 Fed. Cl. 487 (Federal Claims, 2005)
Marriott International Resorts, L.P. v. United States
63 Fed. Cl. 144 (Federal Claims, 2004)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
61 Fed. Cl. 411, 94 A.F.T.R.2d (RIA) 5312, 2004 U.S. Claims LEXIS 190, 2004 WL 1708972, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/marriott-international-resorts-lp-v-united-states-uscfc-2004.