CAFC-Appointed Amicus Asks for Right to Take Part in Hearing on CIT's Ability to Un-Redact Info
Andrew Dhuey, a patent attorney and court-appointed amicus, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit this week for permission to take part in the oral argument in a case on former Court of International Trade Judge Stephen Vaden's decision not to redact information deemed confidential by the International Trade Commission. Dhuey noted that a motions panel at the CAFC previously said his right to participate in oral argument shall be decided by the merits panel, and that the now-assigned merits panel has yet to issue a decision on the amicus' right to take part in the hearing (In Re United States, Fed. Cir. # 24-1566).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Vaden refused to redact certain business proprietary information in his 2023 decision on an antidumping duty and countervailing duty injury case. The judge said all the information alleged to be proprietary either hadn't been properly bracketed by the ITC during the trial or was publicly available (see 2401090046). CAFC appointed Dhuey to be an amicus to defend Vaden's decision, at Dhuey's request, seeing as no other party was going to defend the trade court's decision (see 2502200017).
In his brief, Dhuey said CIT correctly read 19 U.S.C. Section 1516a(b)(2)(B) to acknowledge its discretion to "independently determine the confidentiality of the information in the administrative record and the terms and conditions of disclosing" the information (see 2505010035). The statute says the court "may examine, in camera, the confidential or privileged material" and the confidential or privileged status accorded to any documents shall be preserved; however, the court "may disclose such material under such terms and conditions as it may order."