Judge Altonaga gives nod to IRS over Miccosukees

The Herald covers the big ruling here:

The Miccosukee Indians have lost a contentious tax case that experts say will strengthen federal government efforts to collect more than $1 billion in overdue personal income taxes.
U.S. District Judge Cecilia Altonaga found late Friday that a tribal member must pay $278,758 in taxes, interest and penalties to the Internal Revenue Service for failing to file a tax return in 2001. The judge concluded her family's gaming income — a distribution of casino profits — was not exempt from U.S. tax laws, a ruling likely to have ripple effects on many of the West Miami-Dade tribe’s 600 members.
Altonaga's decision, which will be formally filed as a judgment against the Miccosukees and tribe member Sally Jim later this week, provides the IRS with the legal power to compel other members — including Chairman Billy Cypress — to pay personal income taxes on casino gaming distributions dating back more than a decade.

In other news, The Florida Bar just approved the 5th annual anti-human trafficking conference by the Hispanic National Bar Association on Friday 9/16/16 at St. Thomas University School of Law, Moot Court from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. for 5 CLE credits. Registration is free. Please RSVP to: mvargas@hinshawlaw.com.

The conference will cover trafficking in the Cambodia, a Congressional paper on trafficking in Latin America, religious organizations’ aid to the rescued, the correlation between environmental degradation and trafficking.

Rats.

That's how this 7th Circuit opinion by Judge Easterbrook starts:

Rats. This case is about rats. Giant, inflatable rats, which unions use to demonstrate their unhappiness with employers that do not pay union‐scale wages. Cats too—inflatable fat cats, wearing business suits and pinkie rings, strangling workers. Here is what they look like, as deployed during a labor dispute in the Town of Grand Chute, Wisconsin:

As the pictures show, the rat and the cat are staked to the ground, to prevent the wind from blowing them away. Those stakes led to this litigation.

I can't see to get the pictures from the opinion to paste into the blog post, so go check out the opinion itself. It's pretty funny. And happy first day of school!

Moment of Zen

Here's Justice Ginsburg reading to children:

Eric Trump testifies in Southern District of Florida

Susannah Nesmith for Bloomberg has the details:

Eric Trump took a page from his father’s playbook Tuesday, telling a judge the billionaire’s renovations to a foundering Florida golf club he bought made it even better.
“We took something that had really gone bad and we made it great again,” Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the golf club, told a judge in West Palm Beach, echoing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign slogan.
The Trump Organization saved Trump National Golf Club Jupiter because it was insolvent, Eric Trump testified. Most members love the renovated golf club now, he said. The suit was filed by former golfers at the club who say they were ripped off when Trump didn’t refund their deposits and barred them from the facilities.
After having insisted for months that people who resigned their memberships at the club didn’t lose access, Eric Trump admitted he was wrong on that point and that some had been barred.
“I’m the first person to have enough hubris to say when you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” he said.
The former members sued the golf club in Jupiter to recover almost $5 million in deposits that they say should have been refunded when the elder Trump changed the membership rules after buying the venture from Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. in 2012.

No jury in this one... it will be up to Judge Marra:

Both sides in the dispute agreed to waive a jury trial, so U.S. District Judge Kenneth Marra will decide whether Trump must pay the club’s former members back.
Marra said at the conclusion of the two-day trial on Tuesday that he’d rule later.

Donald Trump in trial in SDFLA

No kidding.  I'm surprised it's not getting more play, but Donald Trump is a defendant in a civil lawsuit in WPB before Judge Marra in a trial that started yesterday.  He testified by taped deposition.  Here's the PBP:

 In classic Donald Trump fashion, the GOP presidential nominee testified Monday that improvements he made to an ailing Jupiter country club were “beautiful,” the members were “very happy” and those who weren’t were just “angry people” he didn’t want in his club anyway.
Never mind that the reason those people are angry is they believe he stole as much as $6 million from them.
Trump’s appearance at the breach of contract trial in U.S. District Court was limited to a roughly 25-minute video deposition. It was taken at his New York City offices in April 2015, long before anyone imagined the real-estate-mogul-turned-TV-celebrity would secure the Republican presidential nomination.
As expected, Trump denied allegations by members of Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter that he improperly changed the rules of their membership contracts when he in December 2012 bought the financially troubled club from Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa for $5 million. He was equally dismissive of suggestions that he got the club at a bargain price by agreeing to assume an estimated $41 million in liabilities that hung over it because Ritz-Carlton promised to refund initiation fees, ranging from $35,000 to $210,000, to members who quit.
“It could have been the club would have closed and gone into bankruptcy and everyone would have lost money,” Trump testified. His purchase, he said, saved the club — and its members — from what he called “the ‘B’ word.”But, three members who filed the class-action suit on behalf of roughly 60 others when he refused to refund their membership fees, said Trump used their money to put the club on firm financial footing.Shortly after buying the club in a gated community on Donald Ross Road near Alternate A1A, he wrote members a letter, alerting anyone who had announced their intention of resigning: “you’re out.”