Opinions consistently apply existing precedent such as United States v. Mead Corp. without questioning its validity, as seen in [1]. Horizon Lines, LLC v. United Sta… ↗
The case concerned whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection properly assessed duties under 19 U.S.C. § 1466 on work performed on the U.S.-flagged vessel Horizon Crusader during a 2006 drydocking in China, where the owner removed and replaced underwater hull coatings (including tin-based anti-fouling paint) to comply with an International Maritime Organization convention. Customs treated the work as dutiable repairs and denied the owner’s protest, but after a de novo trial the Court of International Trade denied the government’s motion for a directed verdict and entered judgment for the plaintiff. The court found that the primary purpose of the work was regulatory compliance rather than repair, that the hull had suffered only minimal blistering or corrosion, and that any repair aspects were incidental; it therefore held the expenses non-dutiable and ordered a refund of excess duties with interest.
The case involved Giorgio Foods' lawsuit challenging the denial of distributions under the Continued Dumping and Subsidy Offset Act (CDSOA) for preserved mushroom imports, based on the company's responses to ITC questionnaires during related antidumping investigations. Giorgio moved to amend its complaint by dropping facial First Amendment and Equal Protection challenges to the CDSOA's petition-support eligibility requirement (while retaining as-applied challenges), adding claims for statutory violations by the ITC and Customs and for a Due Process violation, and clarifying its request for monetary relief. The Court of International Trade granted the motion in part and denied it in part, allowing the facial challenges to be dropped but rejecting the new statutory and Due Process claims as well as the clarification of relief. The court reasoned that the first two amendments aligned with Federal Circuit precedent in SKF USA permitting as-applied challenges, while the remaining proposals were futile or otherwise improper under the applicable procedural standards.
business & regulatoryfree speechcivil rightsprocedure
The case concerned the proper tariff classification under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States for imported synthetic beta-carotene products (Betavit 10% and 20%) brought in by BASF between 2000 and 2001. U.S. Customs and Border Protection had classified the goods as food preparations under Heading 2106, while BASF argued they should instead fall under Heading 3204 as beta-carotene coloring matter, or alternatively as a provitamin under Heading 2936 or a medicament under Heading 3003. The U.S. Court of International Trade denied BASF’s motion for summary judgment because the record contained conflicting evidence on the products’ principal use, creating genuine issues of material fact that required a trial; the court followed its recent Roche Vitamins decision, which had reached the same result on similar beta-carotene merchandise.
In Ford Motor Co. v. United States, Ford Motor Company sued U.S. Customs and Border Protection over drawback entries (refund claims for duties on imported goods later exported) filed before December 2004 that Customs had not affirmatively liquidated by the time the suit was filed in September 2009. Ford sought a declaratory judgment that these entries were deemed liquidated by operation of law under 19 U.S.C. § 1504(a)(2) at the drawback amounts it originally asserted, barring Customs from later reviewing them or recovering alleged overpayments. The U.S. Court of International Trade denied the government’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. The court held that jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(i) attached when the action commenced and could not be ousted by Customs’s post-filing liquidations of some entries, and that the claims were ripe.
This case involves a motion filed by Roche Vitamins, Inc. in a customs classification dispute before the U.S. Court of International Trade, seeking to have specific paragraphs of its Statement of Material Facts Not in Dispute deemed admitted due to the U.S. government's allegedly insufficient responses under USCIT Rule 56(h). The court denied the motion. The core reasoning was that, although the defendant's responses may have fallen short of the rule's requirements for citing admissible evidence, Federal Circuit precedent requires the court in customs classification cases to independently reach the correct result on both facts and law rather than allowing procedural defaults to dictate outcomes that could misclassify merchandise.
This case involved a challenge by the Association of American School Paper Suppliers to the Department of Commerce's selection of financial data from an Indian company to calculate surrogate values in an antidumping duty review for lined paper products from China. After an initial remand, Commerce reaffirmed its choice of the Sundaram Multi Pap Ltd. data over alternatives proposed by the plaintiff. The United States Court of International Trade affirmed Commerce's redetermination, finding it supported by substantial evidence. The court reasoned that Commerce adequately explained why the selected data was usable despite some incompleteness and that there was no consistent policy of rejecting all incomplete statements.
