CIT Reverses Itself on Attorney Fee Award in AD Duty Case

The Court of International Trade on June 11 reversed position on its award of attorney's fees to the Commerce Department and US Magnesium for alleged misconduct by Tianjin Magnesium International (TMI) during an antidumping duty administrative review on pure magnesium from China and a subsequent court case. CIT Judge Nicholas Tsoucalas had excoriated TMI in an April opinion (see 13042503), awarding fees because of “TMI’s repeated efforts -- through counsel -- to obstruct Commerce’s exercise of its statutory duties, to delay proceedings through frivolous argumentation and filings, and to mislead the court on material matters of fact and law constitute an intolerable level of vexatiousness and bad faith.” But after TMI filed a motion for reconsideration, Judge Richard Eaton disagreed that the company’s conduct was egregious. In each instance cited by Tsoucalas, Eaton found a reasonable explanation for TMI’s actions. “The invocation of the court’s inherent power to award attorney’s fees must be done with ‘restraint and discretion,'” said Eaton. “On reconsideration, the court finds plaintiff’s behavior, taken as a whole, did not warrant the imposition of attorney’s fees.”