Customs Law

The penalty case against Greenlight Organic Inc. and now its owner and president seems to be a case that will not end. For background, read the previous posts here and here . This issue raised in the most recent Court of International Trade decision has to do with a penalty claim the United States is asserting against Mr. Parambit Singh Aulakh, the owner and president of the importer. The case against Mr. Aulakh is premised on the allegation that Greenlight, under the direction of Mr. Aulakh, misclassified and undervalued shipments of athletic apparel on approximately 122 entries. There are two Court rules in play in this phase of the case. To survive a motion to dismiss under CIT Rule 12(b)(6) , the complaint must contain sufficient factual matter to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face. That means the complaint must contain assertions of facts that allow the Court to draw a reasonable inference that the defendant is liable. It is not enough for the plaintiff to...

Remember when the President imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum under Section 232? He did so following a Commerce Department study showing that imports of steel and aluminum suppress domestic production far enough below capacity to be a threat to the national security. The steel tariffs were set at 25% and the aluminum tariffs at 10%. Here is Proclamation 9705 . Those tariffs remain largely in place. In August of 2018, the President followed up with Proclamation 9772 , which doubled the tariff on steel from Turkey to 50%. In Transpacific Steel LLC   v. United States , an importer of Turkish steel challenged that increase and sought a refund of the difference. The bases for the challenge are, among other things, that singling out importers of products from Turkey violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the President’s failure to follow required procedures violates the Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The United States moved to dis...

Home Products International, Inc. v. United States is one of those cases that causes much head scratching and some gnashing of teeth. There is a long-recognized principle of customs law that once Customs and Border Protection liquidates an entry, that liquidation is final as to all parties. That principle is enshrined in law at 19 USC 1514(a) , which says, in relevant part, that a liquidation: shall be final and conclusive upon all persons (including the United States and any officer thereof) unless a protest is filed in accordance with this section, or unless a civil action contesting the denial of a protest, in whole or in part, is commenced in the United States Court of International Trade in accordance with chapter 169 of title 28 within the time prescribed by section 2636 of that title . . . . The problem is Home Products stems from the fact that after 10 years of apparently hard-fought litigation in the Court of International Trade, the Court issued a judgment that t...