10th Circuit Sends Back Motion to Dismiss Case on Antidumping Duty Petitions for Mattresses
The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah did not make it clear whether it meant to dismiss only the first amended complaint or the entire case in a dispute over whether U.S. mattress producers fraudulently submitted two antidumping duty petitions, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit said. Remanding the issue to the Utah district court, a three-judge panel at the 10th Circuit said it was unclear whether the trial court's dismissal order in the case is a "final appealable decision" (CVB v. Corsicana Mattress Co., 10th Cir. # 22-4054).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Plaintiff CVB launched the suit to accuse a group of U.S. mattress companies, led by Corsicana Mattress Co., of fraudulently petitioning for the AD orders, as well as of monopoly leveraging and monopolization, among other things. CVB said that the mattress companies "conspired to make false and misleading public statements to disrupt competition and engaged in anticompetitive conduct that was unrelated to the filing of the two petitions."
Corsicana moved to dismiss the case, which the district court granted for the case's first six counts on the grounds that the mattress firms are immune from CVB's claims based on "petitioning activitiy." The court added that the antitrust claims under the Sherman and Lanham Acts and the claims for intentional interference with prospective business relations with and defamation are also dismissed.
Now before the 10th Circuit, the appellate court is unclear as to whether this dismissal order was a final decision. The 10th Circuit said that in granting the motion to dismiss the first amended complaint, the trial court "did not expressly and unambiguously dismiss the entire action; its decision referred only to the dismissal of the aforementioned categories of claims asserted by" CVB. "Further, the dismissal order did not expressly address whether Plaintiff-Appellant might be permitted to further amend its complaint in an effort to cure the deficiencies that led to the without-prejudice dismissal of the non-petitioning activity claims."
The appellate court said the parties shall file a joint report on the status of the remand every 30 days.