Hitachi Home Electronics (America) wants the U.S. Supreme Court to...

July 30 petition. In 2003, Hitachi began importing plasma TVs into the U.S. produced at its factories in Mexico, the petition said. Hitachi paid 5 percent import duty on every set it shipped into the U.S., it said. It filed 10 protests with Customs claiming it should have been allowed to ship the sets duty-free under the North American Free Trade Agreement, it said. But Customs never acted on the protests, contrary to the Customs Courts Act of 1970, which places a “two-year limitation” on granting or denying such protests, it said. Hitachi filed and lost its suit in the Court of International Trade, and last October, the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit ruled that notwithstanding the two-year limitation in the statute, “Customs may take as long as it wants to allow or deny protests,” the petition said. Problem is, “importers file tens of thousands of such protests annually, disputing the assessment and collection of billions of dollars in duty assessments and payments,” it said. Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, letting stand the appeals court ruling “will embolden Customs’ practice of ignoring the two-year limitation” in the statute and will “empower Customs to refuse to decide any protests, thus increasing uncertainty and costs to U.S. consumers and businesses,” it said. Only the Supreme Court “can remedy the harm caused by the Federal Circuit’s decision which affects all customs duty protests and, potentially, all imports into the United States,” it said. “This case, containing no factual disputes, offers this Court a clean opportunity to examine the federal question of paramount importance raised in this case.” Except for a few product categories like front projectors, Hitachi has largely abandoned the CE business in the U.S. and stopped shipping plasma TVs and other CE products here at least two years ago.