Plywood Importer Says 'Manifest Injustice' Would Result From CIT Refusal to Reconsider Evasion Ruling
Plywood importer InterGlobal Forest, which is seeking a rehearing of its case challenging CBP’s finding that it evaded antidumping and countervailing duties on plywood from China, said Jan. 2 that the government’s response to its motion for reconsideration (see 2512150042) “ignores” its “substantive arguments that the Government is required to complete the administrative record” and “fails to refute IGF’s argument that there has been a manifest injustice in this case” (American Pacific Plywood v. United States, CIT Consol. # 20-03914).
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In July, Court of International Trade Judge M. Miller Baker sustained CBP’s evasion finding regarding InterGlobal and two other importers, all of whom purchased their product from Cambodian exporter LB Wood (see 2507100044). InterGlobal alleges at least eight errors in the court’s decision (see 2508080061).
In its Dec. 29 reply, InterGlobal again argued that it had been treated differently than a similarly situated importer, Richmond International, because Richmond’s case had ended in a settlement and a negative evasion ruling. Richmond, too, purchased from LB Wood, InterGlobal pointed out.
In a settlement, CBP stipulated that Richmond’s products’ country of origin was Cambodia, InterGlobal said again. InterGlobal argued that the stipulation and other related documents should have been placed on the present case’s record by the government.
The government is required to explain departures from prior decisions, InterGlobal said, citing Royal Brush. It is also usually willing to complete case records with information from other cases when that would be helpful to its own position, the importer said.
Further, it said, it didn’t have access to most of the documents from the Richmond investigation because they were under seal, so it couldn't have placed them on the record itself.
InterGlobal also argued again, opposing the government’s claim otherwise, that that stipulation was directly relevant to its own litigation. It pushed back against the court’s decision that it applied to different products -- Richmond’s, not InterGlobal’s -- and that judicial estoppel wasn’t implicated because CBP never "succeed[ed]” in persuading the court to accept the stipulation.
“The main problem with the Government and Court depicting the confession of judgment as a ‘settlement’ is that Richmond never wanted to settle and never agreed to the confession of judgment -- it was filed unilaterally by the Government and never agreed to by Richmond,” the importer said. “How can the confession of judgment be called a ‘surrender’ if Richmond never asked for or agreed to it?”
It also alleged that the Richmond litigation had involved the government “continuously delay[ing] and refus[ing] to respond to discovery requests. The U.S. finally agreed to the stipulated judgments after CBP found evasion by InterGlobal, it said, which it claimed had been done purposefully to give the U.S. an advantage in the present case.
The importer further denied that the two proceedings dealt with different products. In denying a request for further review from Richmond after its protest of its own evasion ruling was denied, CBP itself had admitted that “the exact factual and legal matters at issue” in the other importer’s protest “are pending in litigation before the CIT.”
That pending suit was “the instant matter,” InterGlobal claimed.
The importer also disagreed that it had failed to exhaust any argument that its products were out-of-scope because LB Wood never used three-ply plywood from China in its production processes. It said its claim has “always been that the manufactured three-ply and larger products (plywood) imported from LB Wood were produced in Cambodia, not China.”