Correction: The Court of International Trade's denied protest jurisdiction isn’t relevant in Trebbianno's lawsuit seeking refunds of Section 301 tariffs because the exclusions were not a CBP decision (see 2007270051), said Chris Kane of Simon Gluck, who represents Trebbianno, in a post on LinkedIn.
Centric Parts has updated its processes to avoid misclassifying imported car parts, the company said in a July 24 emailed statement in response to a Justice Department settlement announcement (see 2007230034). “This settlement represents an appropriate resolution of this situation, which did not involve anybody who worked for Centric Parts or any division of APC Automotive Technologies by the time it was brought to our attention,” the company said. “We have put a new process in place to ensure that a similar issue does not arise in the future, and we look forward to putting this behind us as we continue our strategic and operational transformation.”
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 13-19:
A nearly $3.5 million penalty case against an apparel importer will proceed, after the Court of International Trade on July 14 denied the importer’s bid to dismiss a second attempt by the government to collect. CIT had dismissed the government’s case in November because it did not allege with enough specificity the connection between Greenlight Organic’s owner, Sonny Aulakh, and the purported misclassification and double invoicing schemes that led CBP to assess $3,232,032 for customs fraud plus $238,516.56 in unpaid duties on both Greenlight and Aulakh (see 1911260047). It did allow the government to file another complaint to add more information. This time, additional information on the alleged schemes and their participants included in the second complaint were enough to get the case over the hump so it can progress to more detailed arguments, CIT said.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of July 6-12:
No new lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade, nor any appeals of CIT decisions filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, during the week of June 29 - July 5.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 22-28:
The Supreme Court June 29 declined to hear Ford Motor Co.’s appeal of a case on the propriety of its tariff engineering of vans to obtain a lower rate for passenger vehicles. The high court’s order denies Ford’s petition for certiorari without any explanation, per its usual practice, leaving in place a June 2019 Federal Circuit decision. The appeals court had held that Ford vans imported with passenger seats, then stripped down right after importation to turn them into cargo vans, are classifiable as cargo vans because their use after importation is a factor in their tariff classification, even if the relevant subheadings aren’t “use” provisions (see 1906070061). Ford and several allied trade groups had said that expansion in the consideration of use in tariff classification creates uncertainty for importers by making tariff classification more unpredictable (see 1908070066).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 15-21:
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of June 8-14: