TAXATION-FEDERAL INCOME TAX-SALE OF GOODWILL TREATED AS SALE OF A CAPITAL ASSET

Plaintiffs were partners in a wholesale produce business which was well established and had a large goodwill value in the area. Plaintiffs sold the whole business, including goodwill, to another produce dealer, with a specific portion of the sale price being allocated to the sale of the goodwill. Included in the sale contract was an agreement by the sellers not to compete with the purchaser for a certain number of years, but it was understood by the parties that none of the sale price was given in consideration of this agreement. Plaintiffs returned the amount received from the sale of goodwill as gain from the sale of a capital asset. The Commissioner of Internal Revenue assessed a deficiency on the theory that this amount should be considered ordinary income. On a petition to the United States District Court, it was held that the sale of goodwill constitutes the sale of a capital asset. Cox v. United States, (D.C. Ariz. 1951) 99 F. Supp. 518

TAXATION-FEDERAL INCOME TAX-GAIN ON SALE OF LIVESTOCK

Taxpayer was engaged in the business of raising and breeding beef cattle. Each year he would add to the breeding herd the young females raised the previous year and would cull from the herd those older cows who had outlived their most productive years and such young heifers as had proved unproductive. These culls were sold on the market, and taxpayer returned the amounts received from these sales as capital asset gain. The Commissioner assessed a deficiency claiming the sales resulted in ordinary income. Held, the sale of culls from a breeding herd is treated as a sale of capital assets under section 117(j) of the Internal Revenue Code. Miller v. United States, (D.C. Neb. 1951) 98 F. Supp. 948

CIVIL PROCEDURE-JUDGMENTS-RES JUDICATA EFFECT OF DISMISSAL WITH PREJUDICE

Plaintiff brought an action in the circuit court against Crane for breach of an alleged trust agreement. When Crane died, his estate, which was substituted as defendant, moved to dismiss the action, alleging that plaintiff\u27s cause of action was barred by laches and by a previous divorce settlement. Plaintiff having failed to file counter affidavits, the court dismissed the complaint and allowed plaintiff twenty days to file an amended complaint. When he failed to do so, the court dismissed the action with prejudice. Plaintiff\u27s later claim, filed in the probate court, but based on the same trust agreement, was allowed. On trial de novo in the circuit court, the probate court was reversed on the ground that the dismissal of the former action was res judicata. The court refused to allow plaintiff to enter part of the transcript of testimony in the first case or to allow the judge who entered the order to testify to the effect that the dismissal was ordered because of plaintiff\u27s failure to obtain counsel and prosecute her claim. On appeal, held, affirmed. An order dismissing with prejudice is conclusive and establishes that the court has decided the defenses offered are meritorious. In re Crane\u27s Estate, (Ill. App. 1951) 99 N.E. (2d) 204

FEDERAL PROCEDURE-CHANGE OF VENUE ON MOTION OF THE PLAINTIFF

Plaintiff, a resident of California, was injured on defendant corporation\u27s premises in Nevada. Being unable to serve defendant in California, plaintiff started a negligence action in the Federal District Court in Nevada and then moved for a change of venue to the proper Federal District Court in California under section 1404(a) of the Judicial Code. The Federal District Court of Nevada overruled plaintiff\u27s motion. On appeal, held, affirmed. The requirement under 1404(a) that the action be transferred to any district where it might have been brought precludes transfer to a forum where the defendant was not amenable to process. Shapiro v. Bonanza Hotel Co., (9th Cir. 1950) 185 F. (2d) 777

Use of simulation-based medical training in Swiss pediatric hospitals: a national survey.

Simulation-based medical training (SBMT) is a powerful tool for continuing medical education. In contrast to the Anglo-Saxon medical education community, up until recently, SBMT was scarce in continental Europe's pediatric health care education: In 2009, only 3 Swiss pediatric health care institutions used SBMT. The Swiss catalogue of objectives in Pediatrics does not acknowledge SBMT. The aim of this survey is to describe and analyze the current state of SBMT in Swiss pediatric hospitals and health care departments. A survey was carried out with medical education representatives of every institution. SBMT was defined as any kind of training with a mannequin excluding national and/or international standardized courses. The survey reference day was May 31st 2015. Thirty Swiss pediatric hospitals and health care departments answered our survey (response rate 96.8%) with 66.6% (20 out of 30) offering SBMT. Four of the 20 hospitals offering SMBT had two independently operating training simulation units, resulting in 24 educational units as the basis for our SBMT analysis. More than 90% of the educational units offering SBMT (22 out of 24 units) were conducting in-situ training and 62.5% (15 out of 24) were using high-technology mannequins. Technical skills, communication and leadership ranked among the top training priorities. All institutions catered to inter-professional participants. The vast majority conducted training that was neither embedded within a larger educational curriculum (19 out of 24: 79.2%) nor evaluated (16 out of 24: 66.6%) by its participants. Only 5 institutions (20.8%) extended their training to at least two thirds of their hospital staff. Two thirds of the Swiss pediatric hospitals and health care departments are offering SBMT. Swiss pediatric SBMT is inter-professional, mainly in-situ based, covering technical as well as non-technical skills, and often employing high-technology mannequins. The absence of a systematic approach and reaching only a small number of healthcare employees were identified as shortcomings that need to be addressed

L-functions with large analytic rank and abelian varieties with large algebraic rank over function fields

The goal of this paper is to explain how a simple but apparently new fact of linear algebra together with the cohomological interpretation of L-functions allows one to produce many examples of L-functions over function fields vanishing to high order at the center point of their functional equation. The main application is that for every prime p and every integer g>0 there are absolutely simple abelian varieties of dimension g over Fp(t) for which the BSD conjecture holds and which have arbitrarily large rank.Comment: To appear in Inventiones Mathematica

The CFH Optical PDCS survey (COP) I: The Data

This paper presents and gives the COP (COP: CFHT Optical PDCS; CFHT: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope; PDCS: Palomar Distant Cluster Survey) survey data. We describe our photometric and spectroscopic observations with the MOS multi-slit spectrograph at the CFH telescope. A comparison of the photometry from the PDCS (Postman et al. 1996) catalogs and from the new images we have obtained at the CFH telescope shows that the different magnitude systems can be cross-calibrated. After identification between the PDCS catalogues and our new images, we built catalogues with redshift, coordinates and V, I and Rmagnitudes. We have classified the galaxies along the lines of sight into field and structure galaxies using a gap technique (Katgert et al. 1996). In total we have observed 18 significant structures along the 10 lines of sight.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figures, accepted in A