CAFC Rules on Protest of Bulletin Notice of Reliquidation
In Samuel Aaron, Inc. v. U.S., the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Court of International Trade's decision that it lacked jurisdiction in this case, as Aaron's protest was not filed within 90 days of re-liquidation.
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Aaron is an importer of jewelry made in Thailand, which was eligible for duty free entry under the Generalized System of Preferences program until June 30, 1998, when the GSP program expired. After the program expired, Aaron filed 66 entries prior to October 21, 1998, when Congress reinstated the GSP program.
When the program was reinstated, most imports were granted retroactive duty refunds, but jewelry imports from Thailand were not eligible for retroactive duty-free treatment. Customs then erroneously liquidated Aaron's entries duty-free, refunding the estimated duties (plus interest) paid on November 13, 1998, and December 11, 1998.
On February 8, 1999, prior to expiration of the earliest 90-day period that Customs had to legally reliquidate the entries, Customs placed an off-line bulletin notice in the public area used to post liquidation and re-liquidation information. This notice provided entry information and stated "re-liquidation-increase."
On April 30, 1999, Customs both generated a computer bill for the increased duties due and an ACS-generated bulletin notice (placed in the same public area) that showed April 30, 1999 as the reliquidation date, without any annotation that reliquidation occurred on another date.
Aaron filed a protest on July 29, 1999 disputing the increased duties due. The protest was filed within 90 days of the April 30, 1999 date of the ACS-generated bulletin notice, but more than 90 days after the February 8, 1999 date shown on the off-line bulletin notice.
On appeal, Aaron's main argument was that reliquidation occurred on April 30, 1999 as Customs had failed to accurately compute the duties due in their off-line February 8, 1999 bulletin notice.
The CAFC responded by explaining how Customs' computation was accurate, adding that its decision to run a computer script to generate bills after the reliquidation does not violate 19 CFR 159.1, nor does the fact that the script differentiated between line items to be reliquidated.
CAFC decision 06-1591 (dated 11/16/07) available at http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/06-1591.pdf
CIT decision (Slip Op 06-126, dated 08/17/06) available at http://www.cit.uscourts.gov/slip_op/Slip_op06/06-126.pdf