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Show 4 Foriali, Prd.r D-.- j ur University of Uth Fait LukeCity,xllt2hJn2 ' SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH VOLUME 17, NUMBER 41 More Tax Load On Real Estate Utah Supreme Court Decisions V Congress and the vestor who must turn over proper Administration would greviously ty in order to continue active, and err, should they cause a shift in many of the proposals for change the relative impact of federal in 1973 would accentuate that taxation so as to further impair trend, forcing an oligarchy of cor the competitive position of real porate and wealthy property estate Realtor Wallace R. Wood owners. bury of Salt 'Lake City, Utah, told The committee heard other wit-th- e House Ways and Means Com-- nesses with differing viewpoints mittee hearing special testimony about how the proposed changes on tax reform in Washington, in tax law should affect real D.C., according to Realtor News estate, including two witnesses who advocated a system that Association of Real Estate Boar would allow depreciation benefits ds. more closely related to the true The risk factors of real estate decline in value of the property, development are vastly greater CHICAGO ServiceatTheNational than those related to other major industries Woodbury said. Such factors beyond the control of the developer as construction failures and strikes, increases in the price of lumber and other materials, in- consistent MAER'CANIi WESTERN 2 Law Experts Differ on Free environmental regulations and local governmental planning changes, all add to special hazards of real estate investment, he added. Those of us who are active in the real estate industry are seriously troubled by the number of erroneous assumptions which underlie many of the suggestions made fof changes in the tax laws Press Issue te ANN ARBOR A University of Michigan law professor maintains that increasing government demands for confidential information from journalists mark an erosion of government respect for freedom of the press. This view, held by Prof. Vincent Bias!, is in sharp contrast to the legal position of another U-scholar, Roger Cramton, who insists that the government has always the special place ocrecognized cupied by the press under the applicable to the industry, Woodbury said. He attacked the thesis that everyone makes M money in real estate, and that the tax laws are of more benefit to the real estate industry than to other industries. He cited many examples of severe economic losses suffered by real estate owners, including abandonments of property, failures of shopping centers and hotels, and other unsuccessful ventures to challenge the popular myth that real estate ownership is a panacea for wealth. In actual fact, real estate is a highly competitive business and, in the usual case, the return is no more than commensurate with the risk and the investment, Woodbury said. As to any special privileges in Constitution. M - taxation for real estate in- vestment, Woodbury said, Our tax system has always recognized that most physical assets on sale that the gains depreciate, of capital assets are taxed as capital gains, that tax basis is determined by cost and that interest is a currently deductible expense. He said these same accepted characteristics of other investments are also properly extended to investment in real estate. The net effect of the 1969 Tax Reform Act was not only to shift the impact of taxation more heavily to real estate than other areas of inventment, but particularly to discriminate against the smaller investor, Woodbury said. The rules adopted in 1969 heavily favored the well-capitalize- investor over the d in- - Blasi and Cramton expressed their views in articles carried by Newsday, the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper, and in recent testimony before Congressional committees studying the rights of newsmen subpoenaed by government agencies. Cramton, who is currently on Law School leave from the U-while serving as an assistant attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department, maintains that any law gitfng newsmen absolute immunity from forced testimony would be unnecessary at this time. He insists that the Justice Department has followed a policy of issuing subpoenas to newsmen only when such a measure was considered essential to a criminal or civil investigation. But Prof. Blasi suggests that a major problem wiih pi ess subpoenas is that they are issued in unnecessary circumstances, when the reporter has no important Information to contribute. This was one of the conclusions Blasi reached after surveying more than 1,000 newsmen in a 1970 study undertaken at the request of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. ; And now, Blasi says, government pressure on newsmen is even , greater, following last year's Supreme Court decision requiring newsmen to testily before a grand jury if subpoenaed. The U-professor, who favors M partial immunity for reporters called before government tribunals, says the most alarming thing about the Supreme Court decision is the attitude of the five justices who supported the majority opinion. 5-- 4 - Capsule - Court Reverses Release NO EVIDENCE OF TESTIMONY PERJURED WALLACE DUNNIVAN, Plaintiff & Respondent v. JOHN W. TURNER, Warden, Utah State Prison, Defendant & Appellant Trial Court: Plaintiffs conviction based on perjured testimony and ordered his release. . .on petition for a writ of habeas corpus. (Originally found guilty of crime of assault with a deadly weapon.) Supreme Court: Reversed. . . .record fails to support plaintiff's contention that the prosecutor used perjured testimony to obtain plaintiffs conviction. Plaintiff counsel : Salt Lake Legal Defenders F. John Hill Defendant counsel: William T. Evans David S. Young ARMED ROBBERY CONVICTION AFFIRMED. UTAH v. LONG Supreme Court: . . .Any variation in the witnesss testimony could be shown and was 6hown on This went to the credibility of the testimony and not to itS competency. Plaintiff counsel: Vernon B. Romney DavidS. Young William T. Evans Defendant counsel: H. Don Sharp 523 Eccles Bldg. Ogden, Utah cross-examinatio- See details page . SUPBEME COUBT OF THE UNITED STATES ROE WADE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF DALLAS COUNTY ET AL. v. APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF TEXAS No. 70-1- 8. Argued December 13, 1971 Reargued October 11, 1972 Decided January 22, 1973 A pregnant single woman (Roe) brought a class action challenging the constitutionality of the Texas criminal abortion laws, which proscribe procuring or attempting an abortion except on medical advice for the purpose of saving the mothers life. A licensed physician (Hallford), who had two state abortion prosecutions pending against him, was permitted to intervene. A childless married couple (the Does), the wife not being pregnant, separately attacked the laws, basing alleged injury on the future possibilities of contraceptive failure, pregnancy, unpreparedness for parenthood, and impairment of the wifes health. A three-judg- e District Court, which consolidated the actions, held that Roe and Hallford, and members of their classes, had standing to sue and presented justiciable controversies. Ruling that declaratory, though not injunctive, relief was warranted, the court declared the abortion statutes void as vague and overbroadly infringing those plaintiffs Ninth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The court ruled the Does complaint not justiciable. Appellants directly appealed to this Court on the injunctive rulings, and appellee from the District Courts grant of declaratory relief to Roe and Hallford. Held: 1. While 28 U. S. C. 1253 authorizes no direct appeal to this Court from the grant or denial of dedaratory relief alone, review is not foredosed when the case is properly before the Court on appeal from specific denial of injunctive relief and the arguments as to both injunctive and declaratory relief are necessarily identical. P. 8. 2. Roe has standing to sue; the Does and Hallford do not. cross-appeal- -- ed r . i w t V Pi I f |