Opinion
11832-20
08-15-2023
AVENTIS, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES, Petitioner v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent
ORDER
David Gustafson, Judge
Informed by our previous order (Doc. 23), petitioner ("Aventis") has filed a motion (Doc.25) for an order bifurcating the case and setting August 18, 2023 (or, in the alternative, February 1, 2024) as the close of discovery on one of the two principal issues. The parties have ventilated this request in their memoranda (Docs. 28, 29) and a joint status report (Doc. 30). We will deny Aventis's motion.
We sympathize with Aventis's complaint that this case has been pending for almost three years and that discovery is still not complete. However, we perceive that the deliberate pace of the development of the case has been attributable to both parties, and that an abrupt acceleration and a soon cut-off would be unfairly disadvantageous to the Commissioner.
As for bifurcation, it is true that sometimes bifurcation of a case to allow discovery and dispositive motions related to a single issue may be appropriate--usually where a relatively simple issue may resolve the entire case. But in this instance, the debt-vs.-equity issue that Aventis would press is fact-intensive. As we previously observed (see Doc. 23), a fact-intensive issue may sometimes be a proper subject of summary judgment, but Aventis's filings have not persuaded us that the debt-vs.-equity issue in this case is likely to be resolved without trial. We do not forbid the filing of a motion for summary judgment on October 30, 2023, as Aventis has forecast, but we do not anticipater that such a motion would move the case forward. It would likely take months or more for the parties to brief and the Court to decide a motion for summary judgment on that issue; and if a bifurcation like Aventis proposes were to end with denial of summary judgment, the progress of the case would have stalled, and discovery would still be necessary on the other issue. The trial and resolution of the case would have been further delayed. The judge assigned to this case has modest experience with debt-vs.-equity issues and no experience with FASIT qualification issues; and a single trial on both issues will likely enable the Court to understand and resolve each of the two issues better than if it addresses the issues seriatim.
We will deny the pending motion, but we think it would promote the progress of this case to set a trial date and a date for the cut-off of discovery on both issues. It is therefore
ORDERED that petitioner's motion (Doc. 25) is denied. It is further
ORDERED that, no later than September 8, 2023, the parties shall file a joint status report (or, if that is not expedient, then separate reports) that shall state their proposals (preferably joint, but separate if need be) for an approximate trial date and a date for the cut-off of discovery on both issues.