David Miller, of counsel for Kutak Rock LLP, died Tuesday morning from a heart attack. He was 68 years old.
Mr. Miller joined Kutak’s Washington, D.C., office in 2003, specializing in municipal bond tax controversies.
Prior to that, he worked at Arter & Hadden LLP for 13 years, serving as the firm’s principal municipal bond tax lawyer and a tax controversy specialist until it shut down in July 2003.
He began practicing at Arter & Hadden when it merged with Haynes & Miller in 1990. Mr. Miller had worked at that firm for 19 years, establishing its municipal bond practice. Before joining Haynes & Miller, he worked for four years in the Internal Revenue Service’s office of regional counsel in Boston after graduating from law school.
In addition to tax controversy work, Mr. Miller participated in thousands of bond transactions in every state. He developed computer programs to help structure advance refunding bonds and was hailed as a pioneer in that field.
Colleagues described him as brilliant and innovative.
“He was the most brilliant bond lawyer that I knew in my 40 years of practice,” said C. Willis Ritter, an attorney who has his own firm but worked with Mr. Miller at Haynes & Miller. “I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
“All of the messages of condolences we have received say the same thing: 'Brilliant lawyer and wonderful human being,’ ” said Mitch Bragin, a partner in Kutak Rock’s Washington office. “David will be greatly missed. Our condolences go out to his family and friends.”
Miller served as counsel to several issuers in cases that advanced to the U.S. Tax Court, including Santa Rosa, Calif., which was engaged in a seven-year tax dispute with the IRS over whether it could issue tax-exempt bonds to finance a pipe that transported treated wastewater to a geyser field for private companies to use to generate electricity. The court sided with the city, overruling the IRS.
He also represented the Marengo County, Ala., Port Authority in one of the longest-running IRS audits of a muni bond deal. The authority reached a settlement with the IRS in November 2002 over an alleged arbitrage-driven deal involving $3.9 million of
zero-coupon bonds issued in 1989, with a maturity amount of $138 million.
More recently, he also co-represented 20 California school districts before the IRS in a wide-ranging dispute spanning 26 examinations of $800 million of advance refunding bonds sold between 1993 and 2003. Those audits were settled in 2008 after the lead banker, Kinsell, Newcomb & De Dios Inc. agreed to pay the federal government $5 million.
Along with his work with the American Bar Association’s section on taxation, Mr. Miller was a charter member of the National Association of Bond Lawyers and an initial fellow of the American College of Bond Counsel. He received his law degree in 1967 from the University of Michigan Law School and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1964. Funeral arrangements were not available at press time.
