Opinion
6446-19L
11-23-2021
Wendell C. Robinson & May T. Jung-Robinson Petitioners v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue Respondent
ORDER
David Gustafson Judge
This case will be tried during the Court's upcoming session in Washington, D.C., beginning December 13, 2021. On November 21, 2020, petitioners filed a motion for clarification (Doc. 62), apparently in response to the Commissioner's status report (Doc. 57) and his First Supplement to Status Report (Doc. 59), which supplement was filed in compliance with the Court's order of November 12, 2021 (Doc. 58). Petitioners' motion for clarification seems to address two concerns:
First, petitioners' motion objects that the Commissioner's status report and supplement make a request--i.e., that a witness be allowed to testify remotely--that should have been made by motion. However, our order of November 22, 2021 (Doc. 63), composed before the submission of petitioners' motion but issued after that submission, indicates that the Court does not expect to receive testimony from that witness remotely, so that the objection is moot and we will therefore deny the motion insofar as it makes that objection.
Second, petitioners' motion objects to the Commissioner's supposed filing of "two alleged certificates of record from * * * Respondent's Kansas City Submission Processing Center. These documents are out of court statements offered for the truth of the matters asserted. They have not been admitted into evidence but the Respondent seeks the Court's consideration of them pretrial. * * * Petitioners believe the subject documents should be exclude[d], from the evidence, but Petitioners[] seek[] the Court's clarification on this issue."
We construe this request as a motion in limine to preclude documents from evidence, but we will deny it, without prejudice to petitioners' objecting to such documents either in a stipulation filed by the parties or when non-stipulated documents are offered at trial. First, we do not see the cited documents in any recent filing that the Commissioner relies on. Second, the Standing Pretrial Order directs the parties to submit their proposed exhibits in advance of trial, so there is no fault in submission of proposed exhibits at the present time. Third, we will rule on admissibility of documents at the time of trial. Fourth, it would not be unusual for a party to succeed in offering into evidence documents authenticated by certificates in compliance with Rule 902.
Petitioners' motion appears in the record with an automatically generated watermark on each page (reading "Trial Version / www.nuance.com") that somewhat obscures the text and makes it appear that the document may have been a draft or may have been submitted inadvertently. Petitioners should assure that their future submissions do not bear this feature.
It is therefore
ORDERED that petitioners' motion for clarification (Doc. 62) is denied.