Mason v. United States

This case presents the sensitive problem of whether we should continue to follow a ruling of the Supreme Court which is said no longer to be good law. The decision is West v. Oklahoma Tax Comm'n, 334 U.S. 717 (1948), upholding the right of Oklahoma to levy its estate tax on certain trust property of restricted Osage Indians. Officials of the Bureau of Indian Affairs paid the tax on behalf of, and out of the estate of, a restricted Osage, and her administrators now claim that in doing so the Federal Government breached *604its fiduciary obligation and is therefore liable for the amount of the tax.…