Opinion
10736-20 10744-20 13579-20 13686-20 13879-21 14022-21 23611-21 8474-23 11362-23
12-28-2023
WILKES ROCK NORTH LLC, WILKES INVESTMENTS NORTH LLC, TAX MATTERS PARTNER, ET AL., Petitioner v. COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE, Respondent
ORDER
Mark V. Holmes Judge
One of these cases was on the Court's October 24, 2022 trial calendar for Atlanta, Georgia. It has since become part of a consolidated group of nine that are all assigned to this division of the Court. We spoke with the parties in November to discuss pretrial development. The tentative consensus was to designate one of the cases as a lead case with the parties in the others stipulating to be bound. Any trial seems likely to require a week, probably in the third quarter of next year.
The parties recently reported that they continue to work on these issues. If and when there is a lead case, the Court would still expect to order the parties to try to reach agreement on a pretrial order that would get the lead case ready to be tried at a specific time in 2024. The parties should be aware that the Court's customary practice is to establish fall trial dates for regular calendars sometime in early March. It would be a good, but perhaps not absolutely necessary, thing to get a lead case and firm trial date before we then.
It is therefore
ORDERED that on or before February 16, 2024 the parties shall file another status report describing their progress toward:
. any agreement on the designation of a lead case;
. any progress in negotiating a stipulation binding the parties in the other cases to the results reached in the lead case; and
. the parties' estimates of whether a one-week trial in October 24 is feasible.