Court of International Trade Judge Timothy Stanceu granted a motion from importer Nutricia North America that asked to reopen discovery to replace the company's expert witness in an ongoing case regarding classification of infant formulas (Nutricia North America v. United States, CIT #16-00008). Nutricia asked for the record to be reopened after it discovered that its witness, Dr. Joel Lavine, was convicted of sexually abusing an adult former patient. With the order from Judge Timothy Stanceu, Nutricia will replace Lavine with Dr. Jonah Essers.
The government should not be allowed a second extension in a classification case to respond to an expert witness report, HyAxiom said in a motion filed April 20 with the Court of International Trade. DOJ has "not yet decided whether they intend to respond to HyAxiom’s Expert Report, let alone retained a rebuttal expert," which, the motion argues, is "effectively putting on pause HyAxiom’s ability to complete its discovery" and, if granted, would prejudice HyAxiom, formerly known as Doosan Fuel Cell America, by forcing it to rearrange its litigation strategy, the importer said. The case stems from a February 2021 complaint by Doosan Fuel Cell America that challenged the reclassification of a steam methane reformer and subsequent denial of protest by CBP. CBP classified the reformer under HTS subheading 8503.00.9550 (3%). Doosan claims the proper subheading is 8405.10.0000 (free).
The Court of International Trade should rehear its decision on whether a Warehousing Agreement between two related companies sufficed as a lease or similar use agreement since it failed to address one of the U.S.'s arguments that the two entities are not separate but merely a single entity, DOJ argued in an April 20 motion for rehearing (SGS Sports v. United States, CIT #18-00128).
Mixes of frozen fruits should be classified as food preparations of heading 2106, rather than in the heading in Chapter 8 for fruit deemed to impart the mixture's essential character, an importer said in a motion for summary judgment filed with the Court of International Trade April 18 (Nature's Touch Frozen Foods (West) Inc. v. United States, CIT #20-00131).
The Commerce Department reversed course on 45 Section 232 steel and aluminum tariff exclusion bids, granting the requests on remand at the Court of International Trade. Submitting the results of its voluntary remand request in an April 18 submission, Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security granted importer Mirror Metals' exclusion requests, finding that the bids should be granted after looking at whether the relevant steel article could be made at a sufficient level in the U.S. (Mirror Metals v. United States, CIT #21-00144).
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated April 15 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The Customs Rulings Online Search System (CROSS) was updated April 12 with the following headquarters rulings (ruling revocations and modifications will be detailed elsewhere in a separate article as they are announced in the Customs Bulletin):
The following are short summaries of recent CBP NY rulings issued by the agency's National Commodity Specialist Division in New York:
The Commerce Department should not have tapped Malaysia as the primary surrogate country in an antidumping duty review, plaintiff-appellants, led by Carbon Activated Tianjin Co., said in an April 7 opening brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The appellants said that after the Court of International Trade invalidated Commerce's basis for picking Malaysia, the agency "advanced meritless bases" to keep its pick and that Romania figures to be the better choice (Carbon Activated Tianjin Co. Ltd. v. United States, Fed. Cir. #22-1298).
The following lawsuits were recently filed at the Court of International Trade: