The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 22-28:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on Jan. 23 affirmed a lower court ruling against the Commerce Department’s new strict policies for ending antidumping and countervailing duty reviews of foreign exporters. Agreeing with a Court of International Trade Decision issued in 2015, the CAFC held that Commerce improperly changed a rule, without the required notice-and-comment, when it said in a 2011 guidance document that it would only grant late withdrawals of requests for review in “extraordinary circumstances.” The underlying regulation directs Commerce to grant requests after the deadline when “reasonable.” An importer of glycine from China had challenged the policy when Commerce refused to end a review of its supplier, Baoding Mantong, even though both Baoding Mantong and the domestic petitioner had withdrawn their requests for the Chinese company’s review. Baoding Mantong’s withdrawal was late, and the company subsequently declined to participate in the review, so Commerce assigned it a penalty AD rate of more than 400 percent. Commerce has since amended the final results of the review under CIT order to retroactively end the review of Baoding Mantong without assigning it a new AD rate.

The Justice Department recently issued a memo detailing circumstances when its attorneys should seek dismissal of False Claims Act whistleblower lawsuits. In addition to the government’s ability to intervene on the whistleblower’s side in False Claims Act suits, the law also gives it the less commonly used ability to end cases, even without the whistleblower’s consent. According to the memo, dated Jan. 10, government lawyers should ask courts to dismiss False Claims Act suits in which the whistleblower’s claims are meritless or frivolous, or when the lawsuit is “parasitic or opportunistic” in that it duplicates an existing government investigation or the suit interferes with an agency’s policies or programs.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 15-21:

A Virginia-based furniture importer has agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a whistleblower’s claims that it made false statements on entry documentation in an attempt to evade antidumping duties, the Justice Department said in a Jan. 16 press release. Bassett Mirror Company allegedly misclassified its furniture as non-bedroom furniture, avoiding a 216% AD duty on wooden bedroom furniture from China. The settlement ends a False Claims Act case filed by Kelly Wells, an ecommerce furniture retailer, and subsequently joined by the government. Wells will receive $1.9 million, which comes on top of another $2.4 million Wells received in an associated whistleblower case against Z Gallerie in 2016 (see 1604270033).

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 8-14:

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Jan. 2-7:

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the weeks of Dec. 18-31:

A recent Court of International Trade ruling on a Justice Department request for discovery regarding the involvement of company executives "should send a shiver of concern up the spine of corporate officers and compliance personnel," Barnes Richardson lawyer Lawrence Friedman said. The lawsuit involves Greenlight Organic and allegations that the company illegally misclassified and undervalued merchandise. Within that litigation, the government sought information on the personal finances and the role of two corporate principals that "appear directed at determining whether those individuals were responsible for the alleged fraud or negligence," Friedman said on his blog.

Pacific Eurotex, an "import-export textile business" in Los Angeles, and its two owners pleaded guilty to involvement in a money laundering scheme, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California said in a Dec. 22 news release. The company and owners Morad and Hersel Neman entered a guilty plea to "federal charges in an indictment that accused them of using the business to receive bulk cash that they knew or believed to be the proceeds of narcotics trafficking," the Justice Department said. "The defendants admitted in court documents that they failed to report to federal authorities the receipt of this bulk cash, and that they 'structured' frequent deposits of the cash, in amounts less than $10,000, to avoid a bank reporting requirement that would have drawn the scrutiny of law enforcement." The owners also used two sets of business records to conceal income for tax purposes, it said.