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Stonehill v. IRS, No. 06-0599, 2024 WL 4679128 (D.D.C. Nov. 5, 2024) (Bates, J.)

Date

Stonehill v. IRS, No. 06-0599, 2024 WL 4679128 (D.D.C. Nov. 5, 2024) (Bates, J.)

Re:  Request for records concerning plaintiff and his associate

Disposition:  Denying plaintiff’s motion for relief from judgment

  • Litigation Considerations:  The court relates that “[o]n January 10, 2008, [the] Court granted in part and denied in part both the IRS’s and [plaintiff’s] motions for summary judgment.”  “On [plaintiff’s] motion, this Court agreed that the IRS was collaterally estopped from asserting the attorney-client privilege over certain documents and that the IRS could not withhold the name of an IRS agent pursuant to particular FOIA exemptions.”  “[The] Court granted the IRS’s motions and denied [plaintiff’s] motion in ‘all other respects,’ which included rejecting [plaintiff’s] argument that the IRS had waived FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C) by not raising the exemptions in the parallel, ongoing civil tax litigation.”  “Now, in 2024, [plaintiff] seeks relief from this Court’s 2008 judgment.”  “In her motion for relief under Rule 60(b)(6) and [the] Court’s inherent powers, [plaintiff] argues that the IRS committed fraud on [the] Court by deeming boxes 17 and 83 missing, because it knew the boxes were never lost and was keeping the boxes hidden in a safe to avoid production.”  The court finds that “[plaintiff] does not provide evidence that [the] Court was misled in making the judgment she seeks to set aside.”  “The IRS’s averments that boxes 17 and 83 were lost at the time of its initial response to the FOIA requests neither influenced nor were relevant to [the] Court’s determinations as to whether the IRS properly withheld responsive documents.”  “Those determinations were based on whether the privileges and FOIA exemptions that the IRS had invoked applied to the documents the IRS actually admitted to finding.”  “And the statements about boxes 17 and 83 did not impact [the] Court’s grant of summary judgment to the IRS on the issue of reasonable search, either.”  “[Plaintiff] did not contest the IRS’s motion on that issue, so the Court granted the motion without needing to address the search for boxes 17 and 83 – or for any documents whatsoever.”
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Updated January 6, 2025