Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Goodan, and Six Other Cases

The decision of the Tax Court, based upon its two opinions, is now affirmed by the majority per curiam.' In each of these pronouncements, that court examined with meticulous insistence a collateral question of local California law which they are incompetent to decide. Local law should be left to the local courts, as this instance proves anew. After the Tax Court had rendered its first opinion, they were confronted squarely with another deliberate formulation of rule by the Supreme Court of California apparently diametrically opposed to the position which the majority of the Tax Court had…