Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Home Concrete Case to Address Six-Year Statute Issues

The Court this morning granted certiorari in the Home Concrete case from the Fourth Circuit, thus paving the way for a definitive, nationwide resolution of the issues presented in the Intermountain cases.  We had previously indicated that it was more likely that the Court would hear the Beard case, since the petition in that case was filed first.  It is ironic that the Court chose to hear the Home Concrete case, since that is the one case that neither party urged the Court to take.  (The government asked the Court to grant Beard and hold the Home Concrete case, and the taxpayer asked the Court to deny certiorari. See our previous report here.)  Perhaps the Court thought that Home Concrete was the preferable vehicle because the court of appeals had addressed the applicability of the regulations; perhaps the Court was just being ornery and wanted to resist the government’s efforts to manipulate the docket by contriving to have the Beard case jump ahead of the earlier-decided Home Concrete case.  See our previous report here.

In the long term, it does not appear to make much difference which case the Court agreed to review.  The Court can be expected to resolve the six-year statute question in this case, likely addressing the effect of the regulation.  In the short term, the Court’s choice does affect the briefing schedule.  Since the government is the petitioner in Home Concrete, its brief will be due first, and it will have the opportunity to file a reply brief.  This schedule gives taxpayers interested in filing an amicus brief a bit more time to prepare one than they would have had if Beard were the lead case, as such a brief would be due seven days after the taxpayer’s brief, which will now not be due until mid-December.

The Court took no action on the petitions in Beard and Grapevine.  The petitions in these cases will likely be held and acted upon only after the Home Concrete case is decided.

The government’s opening brief in Home Concrete is due November 14.  The case will likely be argued in January, or possibly February, and the Court will issue its decision before the end of June 2012.