Justia U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Opinion Summaries

The City of Glendale and various other parties sought to set aside the Department of the Interior's decision to accept in trust, for the benefit of the Tohono O'odham Nation, a 54-acre parcel of land known as Parcel 2. The Nation hoped to build a destination resort and casino on Parcel 2, which was unincorporated county land, entirely surrounded by the city. This appeal related the the status of the land as trust. The court affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment for the government after that court concluded that the Secretary of the Interior reasonably applied the Gila Bend Indian Reservation Lands Replacement Act, Pub. L. No. 99-503, 100 Stat. 1798, and that the Act did not violate the Indian Commerce Clause or the Tenth Amendment. View "City of Glendale, et al v. United States, et al" on Justia Law

Marilyn Monroe LLC and its licensee sued Milton Green in the federal district court, claiming ownership of Marilyn Monroe's right of publicity and alleging that Milton Greene was violating Marilyn Monroe LLC's rights by using Monroe's image and likeness for unauthorized commercial purposes, including the advertising and sale of photographs of Monroe. At issue in this case was whether appellants inherited a right of publicity, which was created and deemed posthumous by the states of California and Indiana decades after her death, through a residual clause in her Last Will and Testament. The court concluded that because Monroe's executors consistently represented during the probate proceedings and elsewhere that she was domiciled in New York at her death to avoid payment of California estate taxes, among other things, appellants were judicially estopped from asserting California's posthumous right of publicity. View "Milton H. Greene Archives, Inc. v. Marilyn Monroe LLC, et al." on Justia Law

The Estate appealed the Tax Court's decision that it owed additional estate taxes. At issue was whether gift taxes paid by the donee trustees of a Qualifying Terminable Interest in Property (QTIP) trust, based on a 26 U.S.C. 2519 deemed inter vivos transfer of the QTIP property within three years of the donor's death, must be included in the transferor's gross estate under the so-called "gross-up rule" of section 2035(b). The court held that it did. Therefore, the court held that the decedent paid the gift tax on the section 2519 transfers of the Residual Trusts and her estate should be increased under the gross-up rule by the value of the gifts paid.

In this federal estate tax refund action, the Marshal Naify Revocable Trust appealed the district court's decision granting the Government's motion for judgment on the pleadings pursuant to Rule 12(c). After Naify's death, the Estate deducted $62 million on its federal estate tax return for the estimated amount of California income that it might owe on the $660 million gain if Naify's California tax avoidance plan failed. The court affirmed the judgment and agreed with the district court that the settlement amount was dispositive because it "determine[d] as a factual matter how much the claim against the estate [was] worth and [was] the only moment at which the value of the claim [became] 'certain.'"

This case involved a proposed class action settlement between AOL and plaintiffs where the parties agreed that AOL would make a series of charitable donations. At issue was whether the district court abused its discretion in approving the proposed class action settlement, including a proposed cy pres settlement distribution. The court held that the cy pres distributions here did not comport with the court's cy pres standards. While the donations were made on behalf of a nationwide plaintiff class, they were distributed to geographically isolated and substantively unrelated charities. The court concluded that the district court judge did not have to recuse herself pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 455(a) or (b)(4), 5(iii). The court declined to address the issue of whether the class notice was sufficient. Accordingly, the court reversed in part, affirmed in part, and remanded.

This case arose when taxpayer transferred membership units in a family-owned LLC partly as a gift and partly by a sale to two trusts and coupled the transfers with simultaneous gifts of LLC units to two charitable foundations. Subsequent to an IRS audit, which determined that the units had been undervalued, the foundations discovered they would receive additional units. At issue was whether the taxpayer was entitled to a charitable deduction equal to the value of the additional units the foundations would receive. The court held that Treasury Regulation 25.2522(c)-3(b)(1) did not bar a charitable deduction equal to the value of the additional units the foundations would receive. Therefore, the court affirmed the judgment.