US Says Request for Indefinite Stay Prejudicial Due to Employee Turnover
The U.S. pushed back April 2 against a petitioner’s motion -- with a defendant-intervenor exporter’s consent -- to stay a challenge to the countervailing duty order review of Indian-origin pneumatic off-the-road tires (Titan Tire Corp. v. United States, CIT # 24-00207).
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Petitioner Titan Tire said in its Dec. 20 complaint that Commerce shouldn’t have found adequate the Indian government’s monitoring of the country’s Advanced Authorization Scheme. It previously filed another, similar complaint regarding the review of the prior year (see 2503280055), and it asked the Court of International Trade to stay the present case until the earlier litigation concludes.
But the government argued that Titan’s request for an “indefinite stay” would actually prejudice the United States. It said agency personnel involved in the underlying administrative proceeding might leave their jobs or start to forget details of the events being litigated.
“Experienced and competent personnel are critical agency resources,” it said. “Titan in incorrect in asserting that a stay would not result in any harm or prejudice.”
And the two reviews are distinct, even if they “may share commonalities in some of the issues presented,” the U.S. said.
They have different administrative records, it said; Titan raised distinguishable arguments in each, and the evidence regarding India’s verification of a mandatory respondent’s use of the Advanced Authorization Scheme differs between the two.
“A trial court is not bound by another trial court’s (or its own) decisions ... and it is not an efficient use of resources to stay every trade case because certain issues recur across multiple different trade cases or administrative reviews,” it said.