The Court of International Trade in a June 24 opinion denied plaintiff Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps' move to amend its complaint in an Enforce and Protect Act evasion case to explicitly contest CBP's denial of its protests over the xanthan gum entries subject to the EAPA decision. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the motion was clearly untimely and futile, and found that the delay in filing the amended complaint was undue and that the plaintiff still fails to identify the protests it is contesting.
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
A remand where the Commerce Department reviews a particular issue is a new agency action and renders moot any arguments that a party did not exhaust its administrative remedies prior to the remand, said plaintiffs in an antidumping duty case, led by Ellwood City Forge Co., in a reply brief at the Court of International Trade on June 17. As such, the plaintiffs' arguments as to the agency's procedural obligations relating to on-site verification made during the remand proceeding were properly exhausted, the brief, recently made public, said (Ellwood City Forge Company v. U.S., CIT Consol. #21-00007).
The U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska allowed logistics company Lineage Logistics Holding to file a second amicus brief in a case over Jones Act penalties in light of the U.S.'s motion to dissolve the injunction that bars CBP from issuing new Jones Act penalties. Lineage Logistics filed the brief to back plaintiffs Kloosterboer International Forwarding (KIF) and Alaska Reefer Management (ARM) in opposing the move, arguing that the grounds for the injunction remain in place in that the government has yet to comply with the law to provide adequate notice and comment related to its treatment of the Bayside Canadian Rail line for the purposes of granting an exception to the Jones Act (Kloosterboer International Forwarding v. United States, D. Alaska # 3:21-00198).
The U.S., in an amended complaint, continues to fail to show that importer Crown Cork & Seal (CCS) committed fraud or gross negligence over misclassified metal lid imports, the importer argued in a June 22 motion to dismiss at the Court of International Trade. Seeking again to have the trade court toss the U.S.'s first two counts in the case, CCS said the amended complaint doesn't provide any new facts that can revive the two counts which Judge M. Miller Baker already dismissed (U.S. v. Crown Cork & Seal, CIT #21-00361).
The U.K. Court of Appeal in a June 21 judgment dismissed a case from Build-a-Bear Workshop over the classification of accessories for its stuffed bear imports. Build-a-Bear originally filed the case to avoid the 4.7% duty rate for the accessories, which included clothing and wigs, footwear, plastic and textile hearts and animal accessories, and seek duty-free treatment. In March, the Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery sided with Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs agency that the accessories should be classified as "other toys" (see 2104010047).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Commerce Department improperly deducted Section 232 steel and aluminum duties from antidumping respondent Nippon Steel's U.S. price in an antidumping review, non-selected company Tokyo Steel Manufacturing said in a June 22 complaint at the Court of International Trade. Further, the agency erred by increasing the total cost of manufacturing to account for Nippon Steel's purchases of iron ore from its affiliated suppliers, the brief said (Tokyo Steel Manufacturing v. U.S., CIT #22-00180).
Richard Boncy, a businessman and former Haitian ambassador-at-large charged in a Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribery scheme, moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that the U.S. destroyed potentially exculpatory evidence. Filing the motion in the Massachusetts U.S. District Court, Boncy, joined by co-defendant and Haitian-American businessman Joseph Baptiste, said that the government's move to destroy the evidence -- a disk allegedly containing recordings of two calls with an undercover FBI agent -- "severely abrogates Mr. Boncy's constitutional rights" (United States v. Roger Richard Boncy, D. Mass. #17-10305).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade: