Government lawyers need to actively work with importers to make sure they can comply with discovery requests, the Court of International Trade said in a decision issued Oct. 22. A series of short emails the government exchanged with Great Neck Saw Manufacturers (GNSM), a tool importer facing more than $1 million in penalties for customs violations, does not qualify as a “good faith” effort to confer with the importer as required by CIT rules, the court said. Though GNSM missed the court’s deadline for turning over certain information, and the government gave the company nearly three months extra to comply, there are indications that it may be difficult or impossible for GNSM to comply with the requests, which cover entry documentation dating back to 2005. “The requirement to confer is not met by email exchanges that are little more than perfunctory and simply restate Plaintiff’s demands that GNSM fulfill its discovery obligations,” CIT said. “Given the concerns raised by [GNSM], there may be a need for the parties to compromise, including the possibility that [the government] may have to refine the scope of its interrogatories and document requests,” it said. “Accordingly, the court will order the parties to meet in a good faith effort to resolve the discovery dispute.”

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

The Justice Department failed to meet the legal requirement for a stay of the Court of International Trade's injunction against the importation of fish and shellfish caught in Mexican fisheries using gillnets (see 1807260039), CIT said in an Oct. 22 ruling. The decision is part of a lawsuit over protecting the endangered vaquita porpoise. "In short, Congress determined that when a marine mammal is endangered -- such as the vaquita is here -- because of foreign fishing technologies, targeted embargoes on fish caught using those technologies are the remedies to be imposed," CIT Judge Gary Katzmann said. "The Government’s regulatory preferences do not override this legislative command."

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

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions highlighted U.S. efforts to combat illegal wildlife trade, including through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, during an Oct. 11 speech at the London Illegal Wildlife Trade Conference. "We are tackling this problem head-on in our trade agreements," he said, according to prepared remarks. The new NAFTA "includes the strongest provisions to combat wildlife trafficking of any trade agreement in history," he said. The Justice Department will also be convening an "expert forum to focus on countering the illegal wildlife trade," Sessions said. He also spoke of the continued importance of the Lacey Act, which "remains among our nation’s most powerful weapons in the fight against the illegal wildlife trade."

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Oct. 1-7:

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 24-30:

The Court of International Trade on Oct. 1 issued yet another decision faulting the Commerce Department’s inclusion of masonry anchors under antidumping and countervailing duty orders on steel nails from several countries. As it did in two other recent decisions (see 1805290053 and 1809240016), the court held that, regardless of a nail-like steel pin component, Midwest Fastener’s zinc and nylon anchors are unitary articles of commerce that together do not function like nails and are not understood commercially to be nails. Midwest Fastener is challenging a scope ruling issued by Commerce in 2017 that found its zinc and nylon masonry anchors subject to AD/CV duties on steel nails from Vietnam. CIT ordered Commerce to file its redetermination within 90 days.

The Court of International Trade again sent back a Commerce Department scope ruling finding mass spectrometer parts subject to antidumping and countervailing duties on aluminum extrusions from China, finding in an Oct. 1 decision that the agency did not justify its determination that Agilent’s mass filter radiators are not finished heat sinks exempt from AD/CV duties.

The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of Sept. 17-23: