PITTSBURG, Kan. — Gene Bicknell, the former Pizza Hut magnate with ties to Pittsburg who has been involved in a long-running legal dispute with the State of Kansas over a multi-million-dollar tax bill, has won his appeal following a Kansas Supreme Court decision announced Friday.
“This appeal is the culmination of over a decade's worth of litigation between O. Gene and Rita J. Bicknell and the Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR),” Justice K.J. Wall, Jr., wrote in the unanimous opinion. “While the procedural history is complex and the evidentiary record is enormous, the controlling legal question throughout the litigation has remained relatively simple — whether Gene was a Kansas resident for tax purposes in 2005 and 2006. We hold Gene was domiciled in Florida during those years.”
Last spring, following the Kansas Court of Appeals decision that has now been reversed, Bicknell came to Pittsburg and gave a press conference about his ongoing $63 million dispute with the KDOR.
“I can tell you right now that I will not quit fighting this,” Bicknell said at the time. “I’ll fight it to the last breath of my life, because I believe in what’s right and I believe in justice.”
The dispute stems from an income tax bill — originally $29 million — that the KDOR said Bicknell owed based on his alleged residency in Kansas in 2005 and 2006. Bicknell paid the tax bill, but then sued the state, claiming he was living in Florida during that time, and years of legal battles ensued. The latest decision upholds Bicknell’s original claim that he did not owe the money, which Bicknell says that due to interest has grown to more than $63 million since he originally paid it.
During his press conference in Pittsburg last year, Bicknell also commented on the Kansas Court of Appeals’ ruling overturning a previous decision by the Crawford County District Court, which has now been reversed by the Supreme Court decision announced Friday.
The judges that ruled against him last year “inferred that the Crawford County courts were not able to conduct a fair trial, that they were inferior to other courts in Kansas, even though all the judges in Crawford County had recused themselves,” Bicknell said. “Now, that's an insult to this community, and quite frankly this community deserves better recognition than that.”
