Plaintiffs in Conflict-of-Interest Suit Will Appeal Regardless of Injunction Outcome
Plaintiffs in a conflict-of-interest suit, led by Amsted Rail Co., plan to appeal the Court of International Trade's judgment dismissing the case for lack of jurisdiction regardless of the outcome of their injunction motion, the plaintiffs said in a Nov. 30 response to a court order. However, ARC said that it is "mindful" that developments in the present case against the International Trade Commission and its related action against the Commerce Department "may bear on whether an appeal should be voluntarily dismissed before or after the appeal is docketed" (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States International Trade Commission, CIT #22-00307).
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The case concerns a past ITC injury investigation on freight rail couplers and parts thereof from China and a present injury investigation on the same goods from China and Mexico. ARC is a U.S. producer and importer of freight rail couplers, and originally employed Wiley Rein, where Daniel Pickard was a partner at the time, to represent it. Pickard then filed a petition for ARC, then moved to Buchanan Ingersoll. Following a negative injury determination in the original ITC proceeding, Pickard filed a new petition, this time naming imports from Mexico and China as the source of the injury. He did this knowing that ARC had the only imports of freight rail couplers from Mexico via its maquiladora factory, another plaintiff in the case. The plaintiffs described this as a "betrayal" from Pickard and that the attorney used ARC's information against it.
The plaintiffs took to the trade court, but Judge Gary Katzmann dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction (see 2211160057).The plaintiffs then asked for an injunction barring Pickard and Buchanan from participating in the injury investigation at the ITC pending an appeal of the decision (see 2211210036). Katzmann then ordered the plaintiffs to answer whether they plan to file an appeal of the judgment regardless of the outcome of the injunction motion.