The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 11-17:
Jacob Kopnick
Jacob Kopnick, Associate Editor, is a reporter for Trade Law Daily and its sister publications Export Compliance Daily and International Trade Today. He joined the Warren Communications News team in early 2021 covering a wide range of topics including trade-related court cases and export issues in Europe and Asia. Jacob's background is in trade policy, having spent time with both CSIS and USTR researching international trade and its complexities. Jacob is a graduate of the University of Michigan with a B.A. in Public Policy.
Mosaic tile importer Akua Mosaics and its president, Kenneth Fleming, pleaded guilty on March 19 to conspiring to smuggle Chinese-made porcelain mosaic tiles into the U.S., the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Puerto Rico announced.
The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington dismissed a lawsuit from clothing company Smart Apparel (U.S.) that accused Nordstrom of breaching a contract when it canceled orders from Smart Apparel that were suspected of being made with forced labor (Smart Apparel (U.S.) v. Nordstrom, W.D. Wash. # 23-01754).
The Court of International Trade on March 18 said that the U.S. waited too long to send surety firm Aegis Security Insurance Co. a bill for an unpaid customs bond on Chinese garlic imports that entered in 2004. Judge Stephen Vaden said that the government's eight-year delay in demanding the payment from Aegis "was unreasonable and a breach of contract." The court said the delay broke the "reasonable time requirement" -- an "implied contractual term."
Arthur "Jack" Schubarth, a Montana rancher, pleaded guilty March 12 to conspiring to violate the Lacey Act and to violating the Lacey Act by illegally importing wildlife from Kyrgyzstan, DOJ announced. Schubarth worked for nearly a decade as part of a scheme to "create giant sheep hybrids" in the U.S. with the goal of selling them to "captive hunting facilities," DOJ said. He faces a maximum of five years in prison for each count and a fine of up to $250,000.
Generic drugmaker KVK Research pleaded guilty last week to charges that it "introduced adulterated drugs into interstate commerce" in violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, agreeing to pay $1.5 million in fines and forfeiture, DOJ announced.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of March 4-10:
Ford Motor Company agreed to pay $365 million to settle allegations that it knowingly undervalued hundreds of thousands of cargo vans, DOJ announced. The settlement comes five years after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that CBP properly classified Ford's Transit Connect vehicles as cargo vans, dutiable at 25%, and not as passenger vans, dutiable at 2.5%.
Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was found guilty March 8 of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S. and of gun-related offenses, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on March 7 said that importer RKW Klerks' net wraps products, used in a machine to bale harvested crops, are not "parts" of harvesting machinery under the Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Judges Richard Taranto, Raymond Chen and Tiffany Cunningham thus sided with CBP's classification of the products as "warp knit fabric," dutiable at 10% under HTS subheading 6005.39.00.