Opinion
3033-19
12-18-2023
JAVID YADEGAR & MAHNAZ YADEGAR, Petitioners v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent
ORDER
Mark V. Holmes, Judge.
This case was on the Court's October 19, 2020 trial calendar for New York City. It'd been continued because of its similarity to an even older case, Soleimani v. Commissioner, dkt. no. 8884-13. Petitioners moved to continue this case until Soleimani was decided, which was reasonable because there seemed to be a high probability that the result in Soleimani would lead to a settlement of this case. The Court then released its opinion in Soleimani, but it turned out to be too dependent on its idiosyncratic facts to easily lead to progress in this case. Dr. Yadegar's lawyer then withdrew, which meant we have a four-year-old case about tax years that stretch back to 2007 and in which there has been little progress.
When we last spoke with the parties, all agreed it made sense to begin informal discovery. Respondent promised to send a Branerton letter in which the IRS will describe the records that it wants from Dr. Yadegar. The IRS lawyer also promised to review the 1 and 1/2 boxes of records in the government's own administrative file to get a working knowledge of the case from them. Respondent recently reported that this, too, hasn't seemed to work as the parties haven't met our made much headway in informal discovery. Dr. Yadegar has retained new counsel, however, so the Court thinks it reasonable to adopt respondent's suggestion of keeping the case on a status-report track, but moving it to a pretrial-order track if the lack of progress continues. It is therefore
ORDERED that on or before February 9, 2024 the parties submit settlement documents or respondent file a status report in which he describes any progress towards resolution of this case, or whether in his view the Court should issue a pretrial scheduling order.