Estate of Merchant v. Commissioner Internal Revenue Service’s Empirical Analysis
947 F.2d 1390 · 1991
Citation profile
28 federal appellate · 2 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 54 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably Huffman v. Commissioner (1992), United States v. Lopez (2007)
28 federal appellate · 2 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. § 7430
Relies on Pierce v. Underwood · Vandygriff v. Phillips · Hannahville Indian Community v. United States · United States v. Janis · United States v. McConney
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 54 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“That case held that, under the 1982 version of section 7430, in making the determination that the position of the United States in the proceeding was unreasonable,”
4 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“[Section 7430(c)(7)(B) (1988) ] now provides that the 'position of the United States' in tax proceedings is to be determined from the date of the receipt by the taxpayer of the notice of decision of the Internal Revenue Service Office of Appeals, or the date of the notice of deficiency, whichever is earlier.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“the reasonableness of the government's prelitigation administrative actions, as well as that of its later litigating position, must be taken into account.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
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.