Legal Memorandum: Service to Secure Compliance with an OIC

Issue: Under federal law, is the IRS required to establish notice was given in order to secure compliance with an offer-in-compromise (OIC)?

Ordinarily, a products liability suit requires proof by the plaintiff that the defendant’s product was defective when it left the manufacturer’s control.  See, e.g., Restatement (Third) of Torts:  Products Liability § 1.  When the product is unavailable, coming up with that proof can present quite a challenge.  The res ipsa loquitur doctrine could help under these circumstances.  The res ipsa doctrine may allow for a determination, or at least an inference, of negligence when direct proof of negligence is lacking, as long as the instrumentality that caused the plaintiff’s harm remained in the defendant’s control and the harm would not normally occur in the absence of negligence.  E.g., Gardner v. Coca-Cola Bottling Co., 267 Minn. 505, 127 N.W.2d 557 (1964); see Rebecca A. Leffler, It May Have Been Defective (But Now It’s Gone): Proof of Manufacturing Defect When the Product Is Lost or Destroyed, Rx for the Defense (DRI Oct. 2011).*FN1  Through the development of strict products liability, some courts have expanded the res ipsa loquitur doctrine to circumstances in which the instrumentality was no longer in the defendant’s exclusive control—in other words, here, it could possibly be applied to the chair manufacturer, even though the chair was at the casino.  See id. 

The Restatement (Third) of Torts incorporates the res ipsa doctrine in Section 3, "Circumstantial Evidence Supporting Inference of Product Defect”: 

It may be inferred that the harm sustained by the plaintiff was caused by […]

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