Story Failed to Disclose Lawyer’s Ties to Case

To the Editor:

Grant Williams’s article “A Legal Setback for IRS” (February 25) failed to disclose important facts about Thomas A. Troyer, his clients, and the partisan role he played in the United Cancer Council case as it made its way from the U.S. Tax Court to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

While the article dutifully revealed the client affiliation of all other commentators, Mr. Troyer is identified only as “a Washington lawyer.” Concealed, however, was the fact that Mr. Troyer was counsel of record for a group of the United States’ largest non-profit organizations, including the American Cancer Society, that filed briefs in support of the Internal Revenue Service’s effort to revoke retroactively the tax status of the United Cancer Council.

Thus, Mr. Troyer was not, as the article presented, merely “a Washington lawyer” who offered unbiased commentary on the Court of Appeals’s ruling. Rather, he was actively involved in the case as the lawyer for a group of big organizations that opposed a small, competitor charity, the United Cancer Council. Indeed, as the Court of Appeals stated in its decision, the United Cancer Council had splintered from, and was considered a “rival” of, Mr. Troyer’s client, the American Cancer Society. A great deal of evidence was introduced when the case was before the U.S. Tax Court that showed the predatory tactics the American Cancer Society used against not only the United Cancer Council, but also other organizations it considered “rivals.”

Although the Court of Appeals unanimously — and vigorously — rejected the position Mr. Troyer advocated, there is no excuse for the article’s failure to reveal Mr. Troyer’s active role in the case and his affiliation with the American Cancer Society.

Richard O. Wolfe
General Counsel
Direct Response Consulting Services
McLean, Va.

Editor’s note: Mr. Troyer was part of a legal team that filed a friend of the court brief in 1994 on behalf of four organizations — including Independent Sector, a national coalition of charities and grant makers, and the American Cancer Society — when the case was under review by the U.S. Tax Court.