The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of May 18-24:
Some five months out from the Nov. 1 deadline for cargo release in the Automated Commercial Environment, filers and software developers are shifting into overdrive to implement Partner Government Agency (PGA) message set requirements, said customs brokers and programmers in interviews. Given the large volume of imports regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, that agency’s release of its final Supplemental Guide on May 12 marks an important step, followed closely by the draft release of CBP’s ACE Business Rules implementation guide three days later.
The FCC is being pressed by both sides to resolve an intercarrier compensation fight between LECs and interexchange carriers (IXCs) over “intraMTA” (major trading area) wireline-wireless traffic. A court reviewing related IXC claims also could ask the agency to weigh in, LEC representatives told us. AT&T, which has interests on both sides, said “hundreds of millions” of industry dollars are at stake and has urged the FCC to act in a targeted way to avoid destabilizing intercarrier arrangements, either by disrupting past LEC access-charge revenue or creating unintended IXC access payment obligations for complicated traffic routing.
The Supreme Court on May 26 denied a petition to hear an appeal of Trek Leather, setting in stone a controversial court ruling that some importers fear will expand the liability of corporate officers and employees for customs violations. Tucked without comment in a lengthy order sheet also denying a hearing to scores of other cases (here), the denial of certiorari lets stand a September decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that found Harish Shadadpuri liable for penalties for his corporation’s failure to declare assists on entry documentation, even though the corporation acted as importer of record (see 14091703).
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of May 11-17:
International Trade Today is providing readers with some of the top stories for May 11-15 in case they were missed.
The requirement that importers pay duties before bringing tariff classification cases to court is an unconstitutional hurdle that allows CBP to disregard rulings “with impunity” if the duties imposed are too much for the affected importer to bear, said Gregory Teufel, attorney for International Custom Products (ICP), in oral argument before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit on May 8. The pay to play scheme is an unconstitutional bar to importers’ right to due process because it allows CBP to deprive them of a “property interest” in the form of a binding ruling without any notice or the opportunity to be heard, said Teufel.
The following lawsuits were filed at the Court of International Trade during the week of May 4-10:
An FCC order that would have let participants in the commission's AT&T/DirecTV transaction proceeding review confidential programming and retransmission consent contract data is “substantively and procedurally flawed,” U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel said in a unanimous opinion in CBS et al. v. FCC, vacating the order. The Comcast/Time Warner Cable proceeding had been part of the case, but that portion was rendered moot by the collapse of that deal. The court loss is seen as putting the FCC in a difficult position in its review of AT&T/DirecTV, industry officials connected with the court proceeding told us. Though the opinion leaves the door open for the FCC to issue a new protective order, doing so could further delay AT&T/DirecTV, while not doing so could expose an agency decision approving the deal to court challenge, said industry officials.
An FCC order that would have let participants in the commission's AT&T/DirecTV transaction proceeding review confidential programming and retransmission consent contract data is “substantively and procedurally flawed,” U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Judge David Tatel said in a unanimous opinion in CBS et al. v. FCC, vacating the order. The Comcast/Time Warner Cable proceeding had been part of the case, but that portion was rendered moot by the collapse of that deal. The court loss is seen as putting the FCC in a difficult position in its review of AT&T/DirecTV, industry officials connected with the court proceeding told us. Though the opinion leaves the door open for the FCC to issue a new protective order, doing so could further delay AT&T/DirecTV, while not doing so could expose an agency decision approving the deal to court challenge, said industry officials.