Tricou v. Helvering

68 F.2d 280, 3 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) 1201, 13 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 480, 1933 U.S. App. LEXIS 4933
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
DecidedDecember 18, 1933
Docket7090
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 68 F.2d 280 (Tricou v. Helvering) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Tricou v. Helvering, 68 F.2d 280, 3 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) 1201, 13 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 480, 1933 U.S. App. LEXIS 4933 (9th Cir. 1933).

Opinions

WILBUR, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from a decision of the Board of Tax Appeals refusing to allow the petitioner to deduct from her income in 1923 a part of her net loss incurred in 1922, amounting to $236,736.82.

Petitioner sustained a capital loss of $319,387 in 1922 with reference to her interest in Hidalgo Land Securities Syndicate. She claims that as this loss resulted from the operation of a trade or business regularly carried on by her she thereby sustained a “net loss” for the year' 1922, within the meaning of section 204 of the Revenue Act of 1921 (42 Slat. 231), which she was entitled to carry forward as a deduction in computing her net income for the year 1923.

The Commissioner ruled that petitioner’s loss did not result from the operation of any trade or business regularly carried on by the taxpayer and, consequently, refused to allow the petitioners loss for 1922 to be deducted from her income for the next taxable year.

The Board of Tax Appeals sustained the Commissioner, holding that petitioner was not entitled to the deduction claimed for the reason that she was not engaged in any trade or business in the year 1922. This finding of the ultimate fact is binding upon us unless we can say that there is no substantial evidence to sustain it.

The record before us contains no evidence and no stipulation of facts. Consequently, we cannot determine whether the proof sustains the finding of the ultimate fact involved. The petitioner relies upon facts stated in the opinion and in the findings of fact of the Board of Tax Appeals to overturn its finding of ultimate fact. The function of this court in such a situation is clearly determined by decisions in reference to law cases where the appellate court has no power to find the facts. In Bishoff v. Commissioner, 27 F.(2d) 91, 92 (C. C. A. 3), the court, speaking through Judge Woolley, said: “This provision [44 Stat. 110, § 1003b, 26 USCA § 1226 (b) ] is within the trend of recent legislation respecting fact finding tribunals with special judicial powers such as the Federal Trade Commission whose ‘findings of fact, if supported by testimony,’ are made conclusive (Comp. Stat. §§ 8836a-S836k [15 USCA §§ 41-51]; Curtis Pub. Co. v. Federal Trade Commission (C. C. A.) 270 F. 881, 911), and is generally regarded, because of the power to modify or reverse such of the Board’s decisions as are ‘not in accordance with law,’ as'conferring upon the designated appellate courts jurisdiction to review not questions of fact such as complicated accounts and disputed values but only matters of law such as are raised by writ of error on review of a judgment entered on the verdict of a jury”— citing Avery v. Commissioner (C. C. A.) 22 F.(2d) 6, 55 A. L. R. 1277; Brown v. Commissioner (C. C. A.) 22 F.(2d) 797.

In Burr v. Des Moines Co., 68 U. S. (1 Wall.) 99, 102, 17 L. Ed. 561, it is said: “The statement of facts on which this court will inquire, if there is or is not error in the application of the law to them, is a statement of the ultimate facts or propositions which the evidence is intended to establish, and not the evidence on which those ultimate facts are supposed to rest. The statement must be sufficient in itself:, without inferences .or comparisons, or balancing of testimony, or weighing evidence, to justify the application of the legal principles which must determine the ease. It must leave none of the functions of a jury to be discharged by this court, but must have all the sufficiency, fulness’, and perspicuity of a special verdict. If it requires of the court to weigh conflicting testimony, or to balance admitted facte, and deduce from these the propositions of fact on which alone a legal conclusion can rest, then it is not such a statement as this court can act upon. The paper before us ‘is evidence of facts, and not the facts themselves as agreed or found.’ It is obvious that if the whole of this paper were presented, by a jury as a special verdict, it would be objectionable, as presenting the evi-olence of facts, and not the faets themselves, which must determine the issue.”

This rule has been applied to special findings of fact in the ease of Miller v. Life Ins. Co., 79 U. S. (12 Wall.) 285, 301, 20 L. Ed. 398, where the Supreme Court said: “Conclusions of fact cannot be found by this court when sitting as a court of errors under the act of Congress authorizing- the Circuit Courts to try and determine issues of fact in civil eases, as in the ease before the court. What is required is that the finding’s of the Circuit Court shall contain the conclusions of fact, or, as the rule is stated in a recent decision of this court [citing Burr v. Des Moines Co., supra], a statement of the ultimate facts or propositions which the evidence is intended to establish, and not the evidence on which [282]*282those ultímate facts are supposed to rest, and it is well-settled law that the finding must be sufficient in itself without inferences or comparisons, or balancing of testimony or weighing evidence.”

Judge Van Devamter, speaking for the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in Anglo-American, etc., v. Lombard, 132 F. 721, 734, said: “If any ultimate fact material to the issues is to be inferred from the whole evidence, or from other facts proved or admitted, the inference must be drawn by the trial court, and the fact must be stated in the finding. Like the special verdict of a jury, a special finding can present only questions of law” — citing numerous Supreme Court decisions in support of that proposition.

The Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Brewer, in Lehnen v. Dickson, 148 U. S. 71, 13 S. Ct. 481, 483, 37 L. Ed. 373, said: “ * * * No mere recital of the testimony, whether in the opinion of the court or in a bill of exceptions, can be deemed a special finding of facts. * * * ”

The Supreme Court in that ease declined to determine the ultimate facts involved, stating: “We have no authority to examine the testimony in any ease, and from it make a finding of the ultimate facts.”

In order to understand the effect of this conclusion it is necessary to quote further from the opinion, which we do, as follows:

“To obviate the objection that there is no finding of facts or agreed statement thereof, counsel for plaintiff in error insist that there is really no dispute as to the facts, no conflict in the testimony as to any substantial question, the only difference being as to a subordinate and unimportant matter, and that, therefore, it is the same as though the facts had been agreed upon or found. Further, they suggest that in the opinion delivered by the trial judge there is a narration of the facts we have heretofore recited, together with others, and then this statement preliminary to the discussion of the legal questions: ‘Thayer, District Judge, after stating the facts as above/ and claim that such statement is equivalent to a finding of the facts as previously recited.
“But the burden of the statute is not thrown off simply because the witnesses do not contradict each other, and there is no conflict in the testimony. It may be an easy thing in one case for this court, when the testimony consists simply of deeds, mortgages, or other written instruments, to make a satisfactory finding of the facts; and in another it may be difficult, when the testimony is largely in parol, and the witnesses directly contradict each other. But the rule of the statute is of universal application.

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Tricou v. Helvering
68 F.2d 280 (Ninth Circuit, 1933)

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Bluebook (online)
68 F.2d 280, 3 U.S. Tax Cas. (CCH) 1201, 13 A.F.T.R. (P-H) 480, 1933 U.S. App. LEXIS 4933, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/tricou-v-helvering-ca9-1933.