MR. JUSTICE CLARK delivered the opinion of the Court.
These two federal estate tax cases present a common issue for our determination: Whether a federal court or agency in a federal estate tax controversy is conclusively bound by a state trial court adjudication of property
In No. 673, Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Estate of Bosch, 363 F.2d 1009, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that since the state trial court had "authoritatively determined" the rights of the parties, it was not required to delve into the correctness of that state court decree. In No. 240, Second National Bank of New Haven, Executor v. United States, 351 F.2d 489, another panel of the same Circuit held that the "decrees of the Connecticut Probate Court . . . under no circumstances can be construed as binding" on a federal court in subsequent litigation involving federal revenue laws. Whether these cases conflict in principle or not, which is disputed here, there does exist a widespread conflict among the circuits
I.
(a) No. 673, Commissioner v. Estate of Bosch.
In 1930, decedent, a resident of New York, created a revocable trust which, as amended in 1931, provided that the income from the corpus was to be paid to his wife during her lifetime. The instrument also gave her a general power of appointment, in default of which it provided that half of the corpus was to go to his heirs and the remaining half was to go to those of his wife.
(b) No. 240, Second National Bank of New Haven, Executor v. United States.
Petitioner in this case is the executor of the will of one Brewster, a resident of Connecticut who died in September of 1958. The decedent's will, together with a codicil thereto, was admitted to probate by the Probate Court for the District of Hamden, Connecticut. The will was executed in 1958 and directed the payment "out of my estate my just debts and funeral expenses and any death taxes which may be legally assessed . . . ." It further
II.
Petitioner in No. 240 raises the additional point that the Court of Appeals was incorrect in holding that decedent's will clearly negated the application of the state proration statute. While we did not limit the grant of certiorari, we affirm without discussion the holding of the Court of Appeals on the point. The issue presents solely a question of state law and "[w]e ordinarily accept the determination of local law by the Court of Appeals. . . and we will not disturb it here." Ragan v. Merchants Transfer Co., 337 U.S. 530, 534 (1949); General Box Co. v. United States, 351 U.S. 159, 165 (1956); The Tungus v. Skovgaard, 358 U.S. 588, 596 (1959). The Court of Appeals did not pass on the correctness of the resolution of the state law problem involved in Bosch, No. 673, and it is remanded for that purpose.
III.
The problem of what effect must be given a state trial court decree where the matter decided there is determinative of federal estate tax consequences has long burdened the Bar and the courts. This Court has not addressed itself to the problem for nearly a third of a century.
The opposite view is expressed in Faulkerson's Estate v. United States, 301 F.2d 231. This view seems to approach that of Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), in that the federal court will consider itself bound by the state court decree only after independent examination of the state law as determined by the highest court of the State. The Government urges that an intermediate position be adopted; it suggests that a state trial court adjudication is binding in such cases only when the judgment is the result of an adversary proceeding in the state court. Pierpont v. C. I. R., 336 F.2d 277. Also see the dissent of Friendly, J., in Bosch, No. 673.
We look at the problem differently. First, the Commissioner was not made a party to either of the state proceedings here and neither had the effect of res judicata, Freuler v. Helvering, supra; nor did the principle of collateral estoppel apply. It can hardly be denied that both state proceedings were brought for the purpose of directly affecting federal estate tax liability. Next, it must be remembered that it was a federal taxing statute that the Congress enacted and upon which we are here passing. Therefore, in construing it, we must look to the legislative history surrounding it. We find that the
We believe that this would avoid much of the uncertainty that would result from the "non-adversary" approach and at the same time would be fair to the taxpayer and protect the federal revenue as well.
It is so ordered.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, dissenting.
As the Court says, the issue in these cases is not whether the Commissioner is "bound" by the state court decrees. He was not a party to the state court proceedings and therefore cannot be bound in the sense of res judicata. The question simply is whether, absent fraud or collusion, a federal court can ignore a state court judgment when federal taxation depends upon property rights and when property rights rest on state law, as they do here.
Since our 1938 decision in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, an unbroken line of cases has held that the federal courts must look to state legislation, state decisions, state administrative practice, for the state law that is to be applied. See, e. g., Cities Service Oil Co. v. Dunlap, 308 U.S. 208; Bernhardt v. Polygraphic Co., 350 U.S. 198. Those were diversity cases; and in them we have never suggested that the federal court may ignore a relevant state court decision because it was not entered by the highest state court. Indeed, we have held that the federal court is obligated to follow the decision of a lower state court in the absence of decisions of the State Supreme Court showing that the state law is other than announced by the lower court. See, e. g., Fidelity Union Trust Co. v. Field, 311 U.S. 169; West v. A. T. & T. Co., 311 U.S. 223; Six Companies of California v. Joint Highway District, 311 U.S. 180; Stoner v. New York Life Ins. Co., 311 U.S. 464.
It is true that in King v. Order of Travelers, 333 U.S. 153, we held that a federal court of appeals did not have
Even before it was held that federal courts must apply state law in diversity cases, it was incumbent upon federal courts to take state law from state court decisions when federal tax consequences turned on state law. In Freuler v. Helvering, 291 U.S. 35, the trustee under a decedent's will had included in income distributed to the life beneficiaries amounts representing depreciation of the corpus. The life beneficiaries did not include the amounts constituting depreciation and the Commissioner asserted a deficiency. While the case was on appeal to the Board of Tax Appeals, the trustee filed an accounting in the state probate court, requesting its approval. The state court held that the life beneficiaries were not entitled to the distribution of depreciation of the corpus, and
The issue of the effect of a state court determination came up again in Blair v. Commissioner, 300 U.S. 5. The issue in that case was whether a beneficiary had effectively assigned income from a trust. In prior tax litigation, a federal court held that the trust was a spendthrift trust and that, therefore, the assignments were invalid and the income taxable to the beneficiary. The trustees then brought an action in the state court; the state courts determined that the trust was not a spendthrift trust and that the assignments were valid. The Board of Tax Appeals accepted the decision of the state court and rejected the Commissioner's claim that petitioner was liable for tax on the income. The Court
I would adhere to Freuler v. Helvering, supra, and Blair v. Commissioner, supra. There was no indication in those cases that the state court decision would not be followed if it was not from the highest state court.
The idea that these state proceedings are not to be respected reflects the premise that such proceedings are brought solely to avoid federal taxes. But there are some instances in which an adversary proceeding is impossible (see, e. g., Estate of Darlington v. Commissioner, 302 F.2d 693; Braverman & Gerson, The Conclusiveness of State Court Decrees in Federal Tax Litigation, 17 Tax L. Rev. 545, 570-572 (1962)), and many instances in which the parties desire a determination of their rights for other than tax reasons.
Not giving effect to a state court determination may be unfair to the taxpayer and is contrary to the congressional purpose of making federal tax consequences depend upon rights under state law. The result will be to tax the taxpayer or his estate for benefits which he does not have under state law. This aspect is emphasized in Blair v. Commissioner, supra, where the Government attempted to tax the taxpayer for income to which he had no right under state law. In Second National Bank v. United States, the grandchildren's trusts will be assessed for the estate taxes, since the state court held that the proration statute applied; but the estate tax will be computed as if the proration statute did not apply—the marital deduction will be decreased and the tax increased. Or take the case where a state court determines that X does not own a house. After X dies, a federal court determines that the state court was wrong and that X owned the house, and it
This is not to say that a federal court is bound by all state court decrees. A federal court might not be bound by a consent decree, for it does not purport to be a declaration of state law; it may be merely a judicial stamp placed upon the parties' contractual settlement. Nor need the federal court defer to a state court decree which has been obtained by fraud or collusion. But where, absent those considerations, a state court has reached a deliberate conclusion, where it has construed state law, the federal court should consider the decision to be an exposition of the controlling state law and give it effect as such.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, whom MR. JUSTICE FORTAS joins, dissenting.
The central issue presented by these two cases is whether and in what circumstances a judgment of a lower state court is entitled to conclusiveness in a subsequent federal proceeding, if the state judgment establishes property rights from which stem federal tax consequences. The issue is doubly important: it is a difficult and intensely practical problem, and it involves basic questions of the proper relationship in this context between the state and federal judicial systems. For reasons which follow, I am constrained to dissent from the resolution reached by the Court in both cases.
I.
It is useful first to summarize the legal and factual circumstances out of which these cases arose.
In No. 240, Second National Bank, the decedent's will and codicil provided that one-third of the residuary estate should be held in trust for the decedent's widow,
By its terms, the state proration statute is to be applied unless the "testator otherwise directs." Article I of the decedent's will provided, without apparent ambiguity, that the "provisions of any statute requiring the apportionment or proration of [estate] taxes . . . shall be without effect in the settlement of my estate." Nonetheless, the executor, petitioner here, contended to the Commissioner that the statute was applicable, and, upon receipt of the 30-day deficiency letter,
Apart from the executor's application, the probate court had the benefit only of argument from the guardian ad litem of the grandchildren; the guardian acknowledged that proration under the statute would place the burden of the estate tax entirely upon his wards' trusts, but nevertheless concluded that he had "no objection" to the executor's application. The court, filing a written opinion, determined that the decedent's disclaimer of the statute was ambiguous, and therefore concluded that the statute was applicable. Petitioner thereupon paid the assessed deficiency, and brought this suit for a refund. The District Court and the Court of Appeals both concluded that, because of the character of Connecticut's probate court system,
In No. 673, Estate of Bosch, the decedent created in 1930 a revocable inter vivos trust in favor of his wife, which also granted to her a general testamentary power of appointment over the corpus. In 1951, the decedent's wife, in order to take advantage of the Powers of Appointment Act of 1951, 65 Stat. 91, executed an instrument which purportedly converted the general power into a special power of appointment. Upon the decedent's death in 1957, his executor sought a marital deduction for the amount of the inter vivos trust; under § 2056
The Commissioner, on the basis of the release signed in 1951 by the widow, disallowed the deduction, but the executor sought from the Tax Court a redetermination of the resulting deficiency. While the Tax Court proceeding was still pending, the executor petitioned in the New York Supreme Court for a determination under state law of the validity of the 1951 release. The Tax Court, with the Commissioner's assent, temporarily suspended its proceeding. In the state court, each of the three parties—the trustee, the widow, and the guardian ad litem of an infant who was a possible beneficiary—contended that the release was a nullity. The state court adopted their unanimous view. The Tax Court thereupon accepted the state trial court decision as an "authoritative exposition" of the requirements of state law. 43 T.C. 120. A divided Court of Appeals affirmed. 363 F.2d 1009.
II.
The issue here, despite its importance in general, is essentially quite a narrow one. The questions of law upon which taxation turns in these cases are not among those for which federal definitions or standards have been provided; compare Burnet v. Harmel, 287 U.S. 103, 110; Heiner v. Mellon, 304 U.S. 271, 279; Lyeth v. Hoey, 305 U.S. 188, 194; it is, on the contrary, accepted that federal tax consequences have here been imposed by Congress on property rights as those rights have been defined and delimited by the pertinent state laws. The federal revenue interest thus consists entirely of the expectation that the absence or presence of the rights will be determined accurately in accordance with the prevailing state rules. The question here is, however, not how state law must in the context of federal taxation
The problem may not, as the Court properly observes, be resolved by reference to the principles of res judicata or collateral estoppel, see generally Cromwell v. County of Sac, 94 U.S. 351, 352-353; the Revenue Service has not, and properly need not have, entered an appearance in either of the state court proceedings in question here. Nor do the pertinent provisions of the revenue laws, or their legislative history, provide an adequate guide to the solution of the problem; the only direct reference in that lengthy history relevant to these questions is imprecise and equivocal.
It is, of course, plain that the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U. S. C. § 1652, is applicable here, as it is, by its terms, to any situation in which a federal court must ascertain and apply the law of any of the several States. Nor may it be doubted that the judgments of state courts must be accepted as a part of the state law to which the Act gives force in federal courts, Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64; it is not, for that purpose,
Similarly, it is difficult to see why the formula now ordinarily employed to determine state law in diversity cases—essentially that, absent a recent judgment of the State's highest court, state cases are only data from which the law must be derived—is necessarily applicable without modification in all situations in which federal courts must ascertain state law. The relationship between the state and federal judicial systems is simply too delicate and important to be reduced to any single standard. See Hill, The Erie Doctrine in Bankruptcy, 66 Harv. L. Rev. 1013; Note, The Competence of Federal Courts to Formulate Rules of Decision, 77 Harv. L. Rev. 1084. Compare, e. g., Morgan v. Commissioner, 309 U.S. 78, 80-81; Cardozo, Federal Taxes and the Radiating Potencies of State Court Decisions, 51 Yale L. J. 783. The inadequacy of this formula is particularly patent here, where, unlike the cases in which it was derived, the federal court is confronted by precisely the legal and factual circumstances upon which the state court has already passed.
Accordingly, although the Rules of Decision Act and the Erie doctrine plainly offer relevant guidance to the appropriate result here, they can scarcely be said to demand any single conclusion.
III.
Given the inconclusiveness of these sources, it is essential to approach these questions in terms of the various state and federal interests fundamentally at stake. It suffices for present purposes simply to indicate the pertinent factors. On one side are certain of the principles which ultimately are the wellsprings both of the Rules of Decision Act and of the Erie doctrine. First among those is the expectation that scrupulous
On the other side are important obligations which spring from the practical exigencies of the administration of federal revenue statutes. It can scarcely be doubted that if conclusiveness for federal tax purposes were attributed to any lower state court decree, whether the product of genuinely adversary litigation or not, there would be many occasions on which taxpayers might readily obtain favorable, but entirely inaccurate, determinations of state law from unsuspecting state courts. One need not, to envision this hazard, assume either fraud by the parties or any lack of competence or dis-interestedness among state judges; no more would be needed than a complex issue of law, a crowded calendar, and the presentation to a busy judge of but essentially a single viewpoint. The consequence of any such occurrence would be an explication of state law that would not necessarily be either a reasoned adjudication of the issues or a consistent application of the rules adopted by the State's appellate courts.
It is difficult to suppose that adherence by federal courts to such judgments would contribute materially to
IV.
The foregoing factors might, of course, be thought consistent with a variety of disparate resolutions of the questions these two cases present. If emphasis is placed principally upon the importance of uniformity in the application of law within each of the several States, and thereby upon the apparent unfairness to an individual taxpayer if an issue of state law were differently decided by state and federal courts, it might seem appropriate to accept, in all but the most exceptional of circumstances, the judgment of any state court that has addressed the question at issue. This is the viewpoint identified with the opinion of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Gallagher v. Smith, 223 F.2d 218; it is, in addition, apparently the rule adopted today by my Brother DOUGLAS. Conversely, if emphasis is placed principally upon the hazards to the federal fisc from dubious decisions of lower state courts, it might be thought necessary to require federal courts to examine for themselves, absent a judgment by the State's highest court, the content in each case of the pertinent state law. This, as I understand it, is the rule adopted by a majority of the Court today.
The second position, on the other hand, would require federal intervention into the administration of state law far more frequently than the federal interests here demand; absent a judgment of the State's highest court, federal courts must under this rule re-examine and, if they deem it appropriate, disregard the previous judgment of a state court on precisely the identical question of state law. The result might be widely destructive both of the proper relationship between state and federal law and of the uniformity of the administration of law within a State.
The interests of the federal treasury are essentially narrow here; they are entirely satisfied if a considered judgment is obtained from either a state or a federal court, after consideration of the pertinent materials, of the requirements of state law. For this purpose, the Commissioner need not have, and does not now ask, an opportunity to relitigate in federal courts every issue of state law that may involve federal tax consequences; the federal interest requires only that the Commissioner be permitted
I would therefore hold that in cases in which state-adjudicated property rights are contended to have federal tax consequences, federal courts must attribute conclusiveness to the judgment of a state court, of whatever level in the state procedural system, unless the litigation from which the judgment resulted does not bear the indicia of a genuinely adversary proceeding. I need not undertake to define with any particularity the weight I should give to the various possible factors involved in such an assessment; it suffices to illustrate the more important of the questions which I believe to be pertinent. The principal distinguishing characteristic of a state proceeding to which, in my view, conclusiveness should be attributed is less the number of parties represented before the state court than it is the actual adversity of their financial and other interests. It would certainly be pertinent if it appeared that all the parties had instituted the state proceeding solely for the purpose of defeating the federal revenue. The taking of an appeal would be significant, although scarcely determinative. The burden would be upon the taxpayer, in any case brought either for a redetermination of a deficiency or for a refund, to overturn the presumption, Welch v. Helvering, 290 U.S. 111, 115, that the Commissioner had correctly assessed the necessary tax by establishing that the state court had had an opportunity to make, and had made, a reasoned resolution of the
I recognize, of course, that this approach lacks the precision of both the contrasting yardsticks suggested by the Court and by my Brother DOUGLAS. Yet I believe that it reflects more faithfully than either of those resolutions the demands of our federal system and of the competing interests involved.
V.
I would apply these general principles to the present cases in the following manner. In No. 240, the Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court that "it was unnecessary" to make a finding on whether the proceedings in the Connecticut probate court were collusive or "nonadversary," since the decrees of the probate court could " `under no circumstances' " be considered binding. 351 F.2d 489, 494. I would therefore vacate the judgment of the Court of Appeals and remand the cause for
In No. 673, the Court of Appeals apparently concluded that, absent fraud or collusion, any state court proceeding which terminates in a judgment binding on the parties as to their rights under state law is also conclusive for purposes of federal taxation. 363 F.2d 1009, 1014. I would therefore reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and again would remand the cause for further proceedings consistent with the views expressed in this opinion.
MR. JUSTICE FORTAS, dissenting.
While I join the dissenting opinion of my Brother HARLAN, I believe it appropriate to add these few comments. As my Brother HARLAN states, in a case in which federal tax consequences depend upon state property interests, a federal court should accept the final conclusion of a competent state court, assuming that such a conclusion is an adjudication of substance arrived at after adversary litigation and on the basis of the same careful consideration that state courts normally accord cases involving the determination of state property interests. The touchstone of whether the state proceeding was "adversary" is not alone entirely satisfactory. I think that this concept has been helpfully embellished by Judge Raum of the United States Tax Court in the Bosch case, 43 T.C. 120, 123-124. Judge Raum suggests that among the factors to be considered in determining whether the decision of the state court is to be accepted as final for federal tax purposes are the following: whether the state court had jurisdiction, and whether its determination is fully binding on the parties; whether, in practice, the decisions of the state court have precedential value throughout the State; whether the Commissioner was aware of the state proceedings and had an
FootNotes
"(5) Life estate with power of appointment in surviving spouse.— In the case of an interest in property passing from the decedent, if his surviving spouse is entitled for life to all the income from the entire interest, . . . with power in the surviving spouse to appoint the entire interest, . . . (exercisable in favor of such surviving spouse, or of the estate of such surviving spouse, or in favor of either, whether or not in each case the power is exercisable in favor of others), and with no power in any other person to appoint any part of the interest, or such specific portion, to any person other than the surviving spouse—
"(A) the interest . . . thereof so passing shall, for purposes of subsection (a), be considered as passing to the surviving spouse, and
"(B) no part of the interest so passing shall, for purposes of paragraph (1) (A), be considered as passing to any person other than the surviving spouse.
"This paragraph shall apply only if such power in the surviving spouse to appoint the entire interest, or such specific portion thereof, whether exercisable by will or during life, is exercisable by such spouse alone and in all events."
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