United States of America and Mary Jane Sciascia, Revenue Agent v. Dr. Martin Fox

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• finding that “compelled production of records in a taxpayer’s possession — even records prepared by a third party — implicitly authenticates the records as the taxpayer’s own and thus violates the Fifth Amendment”
• “broad-sweeping” summons for all books and records of sole proprietorship infringes on privilege because government knowledge that some records exist is not sufficiently particular
• rejecting argu- ment from revenue agent's experience as to whether physi- cian likely maintains records sought via subpoena
• distinguishing Fisher, which held that a taxpayer could not be shielded from compelled disclosure of his accountant’s work papers (because such production was not “testimonial”
• finding that a non-specific summons for “all books and records” of the defendant “may compel the taxpayer to add to the ‘sum total of the Government’s information,’ ” and concluding that such a broad summons was nothing more than an impermissible fishing expedition
• proper inquiry is what government knows about this taxpayer’s practices, not about taxpayers in general

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).