United States v. Beckman

• Decision Date: 16 June 1939
• Docket Number: No. 6851.,6851.
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. BECKMAN, Secretary of Banking of Pennsylvania.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

104 F.2d 260 (1939)

UNITED STATES v. BECKMAN, Secretary of Banking of Pennsylvania.

No. 6851.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

May 9, 1939.

Rehearing Denied June 16, 1939.

James W. Morris, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Sewall Key, Norman D. Keller, and Arthur A. Armstrong, Sp. Assts. to Atty. Gen., J. Cullen Ganey, U. S. Atty., of Bethlehem, Pa., and Thomas J. Curtin, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Philadelphia, Pa., for the United States.

Harry C. Liebman, of Philadelphia, Pa., for appellee.

Before MARIS and CLARK, Circuit Judges, and KALODNER, District Judge.

CLARK, Circuit Judge.

This case was tried in the court below under a misunderstanding. Not unnaturally, what we deem to be error occurred. Counsel for the taxpayer-appellee very fairly concedes and accounts for this misapprehension of the learned trial judge in the following language in his brief:

"It is conceded that such finding of a charge-off is contrary to the Agreed Statement of Facts (R. p. 18) in which it was stated that the taxpayer had failed to charge-off on its Records any part of the loss sustained by it on the Bradford Bank debt. It is possible that such fact finding was arrived at by the lower Court from the fact that the Board of Directors of the plaintiff on December 23rd, 1930 by resolution resolved to comply with the direction of the Secretary of Banking (R. 14i, 14j) relating to the writing off of the Bradford bank debt. However, it is admitted that a charge-off was not formally made on the books of the plaintiff and that a finding to the contrary is in opposition to the Agreed Statement of Facts. Moreover suit was instituted herein upon the theory that the plaintiff had sustained a partial loss on the Bradford Bank debt in an amount sufficient to eliminate any taxable income for the year 1930 and that the Commissioner had abused his discretion in disallowing such a claim. Accordingly it is submitted that inasmuch as the Court below made pertinent findings of fact supported by the evidence relating to the issue joined in the pleadings, which findings of fact are sufficient to sustain the judgment herein, the aforesaid additional finding of fact now discussed is unrelated to the issue joined by the parties hereto and is at most harmless error and should not affect the general finding in favor of the plaintiff". Appellee's brief, pp. 17, 18.

The confusion arises from the somewhat misleading similarity between two cognate provisions of the Revenue Act of 1928, § 23 (j), 26 U.S.C.A. § 23 (j) note, p. 130. Both cover the general subject of deductions for so-called bad debts. We can best describe their respective operation in the words of our judicial brethren of the Sixth Circuit: "This statute deals with two classes of debts: Those that have become wholly worthless, and those recoverable only in part. It makes provision for the deduction of each from gross income, providing as to the first that, when `ascertained to be worthless and charged off,' a deduction therefor `shall be allowed'; and as to the second, that, when `satisfied that a debt is recoverable only in part the Commissioner may allow such debt to be charged off in part.' The allowance as to each class depends on the performance of a precedent act or acts. Those in the first are the ascertainment of worthlessness and the charging off, which must be done by the taxpayer, subject, of course, to the review of the Commissioner as to the reasonableness of the ascertainment." Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Liberty Bank & Trust Co., 6 Cir., 59 F. 2d 320, 321, 322.

The opinion of the learned district judge, under the misapprehension we and counsel have spoken of, discusses the question of ascertainment throughout, saying inter alia: "The provision of the law is that a bad debt, let us keep reminded, may be deducted only when the loss has been both ascertained and charged off within the taxable year." Record, p. 37. Nevertheless, the actual issue is preserved by an appropriate conclusion of law. It reads as follows: "That the action of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue in allowing only a deduction to petitioner for a partial loss of $20,000.00 on the indebtedness of the First National Bank of Bradford to it, and disallowing the remainder of the claimed deduction in connection with the partial loss on said indebtedness was plainly arbitrary and unreasonable." Record, pp. 41, 42. And is validated by the learned district judge's "all found as requested", Record, p. 39.

We observe that this conclusion is anachronistically framed in the phraseology of the 1932 Act, 26 U.S.C.A. § 23 (k). It contemplates the discretionary allowance of a deduction. But the controlling language of the 1928 Act, above cited, comprehends only the discretionary allowance of a charge-off, Stranahan v. Commissioner, 6 Cir., 42 F.2d 729, certiorari denied 283 U.S. 822, 51 S.Ct. 346, 75 L.Ed. 1437; Commissioner v. Liberty Bank & Trust Co., above cited.

The narrow instance of this case is no place for an elaborate philosophical or legal discussion of the process of decision, whether that process be judicial, administrative, or personal. Suffice it to say that the exercise of judgment is the exclusion of its antonym, whimsy. Hartrampf's Vocabularies, p. 113. In the words of the Supreme Court quoted by the recently issued (1938) American Jurisprudence, Vol. 14, p. 279: "When invoked as a guide to judicial action it means a sound discretion, that is to say, a discretion exercised not arbitrarily or wilfully, but with regard to what is right and equitable under the circumstances and the law, and directed by the reason and conscience of the judge to a just result." Langnes v. Green, 282 U.S. 531, 541, 51 S.Ct. 243, 75 L.Ed. 520. See, as to judges, Langnes v. Green, above cited, Ex parte United States, 242 U. S. 27, 37 S.Ct. 72, 61 L.Ed. 129, L.R.A. 1917E, 1178, Ann.Cas.1917B, 355, and as to administrative officers generally, Dickinson, Administrative Justice and Supremacy of the Law 192; Black, The "Jurisdictional Fact" Theory and Administrative Finality, 22 Cornell Law Quarterly 349, 515; Cooper, Administrative Justice and the Role of Discretion, 47 Yale Law Journal 577.

Many cases have considered the principle in its application to our particular administrative official, the Federal tax assessor. The earlier ones are collected in two interesting articles entitled, Finality of Determinations of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 28 Columbia Law Review 563; 30 Columbia Law Review 147. They point to the language of the variously worded statutory provisions — "in the opinion of the Commissioner"; "in the discretion of the Commissioner"; "with the approval of the Commissioner"; "full power to determine"; and finally, approximating the words here, "to the satisfaction of the Commissioner", pp. 565 and 162 respectively of the articles above cited. The learned author, Mr. Roswell Magill, in his second article sums up our problem in this wise:

"The second class of cases are those involving sections of the law which make certain determinations depend upon the discretion, belief, opinion, or satisfaction of the Commissioner. In these, the Board gives the Commissioner the benefit of a presumption of prima facie correctness; the courts seem inclined to review only on a showing of abuse of discretion. Since the Board has the duty, by the terms of the laws of redetermining the correct amount of the tax, and at least some part of the Commissioner's facilities and experience for doing so, it is believed that it has the power to substitute its judgment for that of the Commissioner in these cases. Its own decisions are to that effect; and the Oesterlein case points that way. In favor of the view also is the desirability of an independent review outside of the Treasury Department. The fact that the burden of proof is on the taxpayer, is, perhaps, a sufficient safeguard of the revenues.

"On the other hand, it is submitted that the courts should not in such cases overthrow the Commissioner's determination in the absence of a clear showing of failure to exercise discretion, when the duty existed, or of an abuse of...