Yocum v. United States

OPINION

ALLEGRA, Judge.

It is chronicled that Thomas Scott Baldwin, the inventor of the modem parachute, helped finance his other inventions, including improvements in the dirigible, by offering to parachute to the ground from a balloon, at the rate of a dollar per foot of descent. A star attraction at many fairs, Captain Baldwin, on January 30, 1885, made one of his most famous and lucrative jumps, receiving the unheard of sum of $1000 to parachute into San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. This tax refund case involves a “golden parachute” of a different sort, albeit one that, like Baldwin’s,…