Ellis Campbell, Jr., District Director of Internal Revenue v. J. M. Eastland and Montez Eastland

WISDOM, Circuit Judge.

This civil action for a tax refund is tied in a tight knot with a criminal prosecution for fraud.1 With patience some formidable knots may be untangled. A famous one was cut. Here, the trial judge attempted to cut away the criminal strand. We think that it would have been better to have waited and then patiently untangled the knot.

The controversy swirls around discovery. The plaintiffs moved to require the District Director of Internal Revenue to produce reports of agents who had investigated the plaintiffs for tax fraud. The reports were in the United States Attorney’s…