Arkansas Motor Coaches, Ltd. v. Commissioner’s Empirical Analysis
198 F.2d 189 · 1952
Citation profile
36 federal appellate · 7 district · 1 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 81 later decisions — most recently May 2023 · most notably Charlson Realty Co. v. United States (1967), Legille v. Dann (1976)
36 federal appellate · 7 district · 1 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 26 U.S.C. § 272 · 26 U.S.C. § 722
Relies on Henderson v. Carbondale Coal & Coke Co. · Crude Oil Corp. v. Commissioner · Eppler v. Commissioner · Arlington Corp. v. Commissioner
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 81 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“The petitioner here has done everything in its power that could reasonably be done and is entirely without fault. The fault and negligence was manifestly that of government employees — whether employees in the mail service or employees in the Internal Revenue Department would seem to be immaterial. They were government employees and we think the government should not be permitted to take advantage of the negligence or fault of its own employees to defeat this taxpayer in its efforts to have its day in court. 198 F.2d at 192 .”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage““I do not believe that the Post Office Department can be regarded as part of the constituted machinery for making resort to the Tax Court. Neither the statutes, 26 U.S.C.A. Internal Revenue Code, §§ 272(a) (1) , 732, nor the rules of the Tax Court purport to constitute a use of the mails as any part of the official channel for filing a petition for re-determination in that court. In this situation, I am unable to view a litigant’s use of the mails for this purpose as being any different in its nature or consequence than would be his use of express service, freight service, messenger service, personal transporting, or any other means, in the transmittal of his petition to the Tax Court for filing. “Besides this, the doctrine that a taxpayer is entitled to be relieved of any risk to his day in court from fault or negligence on the part of employees of the Post Office Department, where he has chosen to use the mails to make filing of a petition in the Tax Court, is to me fraught with implications, which I am unable here to take the time to attempt to project. To give only one readily occurring example — if delay in the filing of a petition for redetermination, occasioned by fault or negligence of the Post Office Department in the handling of such a petition in the mails, cannot affect the jurisdiction of the Tax Court, then logically litigants against the Government in other courts — the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals, the District Court, etc. — would seem necessarily to be”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“Where, as in this case, matter is transmitted by the United States mails, properly addressed and postage fully prepaid, there is a strong presumption that it will be received by the addressee in the ordinary course of the mails.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.