The Commerce Department's decision to include importer Precision Components' goods in the scope of the antidumping duty order on tapered roller bearings from China cuts against the "clear language of the scope" and Commerce's "historic treatment of the scope," Precision said in a Nov. 9 complaint at the Court of International Trade (Precision Components v. United States, CIT # 23-00218).
The parties in a fraud case involving consumer chargeback requests agreed that Global E-Trading and its officers Gary Cardone and Monica Eaton are permanently enjoined from providing chargeback mitigation services to any covered client, said a stipulated order Tuesday (docket 8:23-cv-00796) for permanent injunction, monetary and statutory relief and final judgment filed by the defendants and by the FTC and the Florida Department of Legal Affairs in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Tampa. The FTC and Florida attorney general alleged in an April 12 complaint (see 2304130013) that the defendants violated Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act by submitting misleading documentation in connection with disputing consumer chargeback requests on behalf of their clients, “ignoring red flags indicating that the documentation was misleading,” and effecting microtransactions that “artificially lowered a merchant’s overall Chargeback Rate by inflating the total number of transactions run through the merchant’s account.” Defendants are also enjoined from providing chargeback mitigation on behalf of themselves or others; assisting others in submitting documentation they should know is misleading or materially inaccurate or failing to disclose any information that Defendants know or should know is relevant and material; providing screenshots of webpages that are “materially different” from webpages consumers saw at the time of the transaction; and engaging in any prohibited tactics to avoid fraud and risk programs established by a financial institution, it said. Under the order, defendants neither admit nor deny the allegations; they admit facts necessary to establish jurisdiction, said the filing. Defendants waive any claim they may have under the Equal Access to Justice Act through the date of the judgment order and agree to bear their own costs and attorneys’ fees, it said. Plaintiffs and defendants waive all rights to appeal, challenge or contest the validity of the judgment order, it said. The final judgment amount includes $100,000 for civil penalties and $50,000 for Florida’s attorneys’ fees.
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
Italian pasta exporters La Molisana and Valdigrano di Flavio Pagani failed in their attempt to provide compelling reasons for the Commerce Department to do away with "longstanding, transparent, and consistent instructions for reporting protein content," the U.S. said in a Nov. 9 reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (La Molisana v. United States, Fed. Cir. # 23-2060).
U.S. District Judge Omar Williams for Connecticut in New Haven granted plaintiff Charter Communications and defendant Bridger Mahlum, Charter’s former director-state government affairs, an additional 14 days, to Nov. 21, to finalize their settlement agreement and to voluntarily dismiss the case, said the judge’s text-only order Tuesday (docket 3:23-cv-01106). Williams also granted the parties’ request that they be allowed to file a notice of dismissal rather than a copy of the settlement agreement, “given the confidential nature of the terms of the agreement,” said the order. Charter had sought injunctive relief against Mahlum to prevent him from going to work for BroadbandMT, a direct competitor, and from spilling Charter’s state broadband, equity, access and deployment program trade secrets with his new employer (see 2308210001).
Countervailing duty petitioners' opposition to exporter Tau-Ken Temri's (TKT's) bid to expand its word count for its reply brief at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit falls flat, the exporter, along with the Kazakh Ministry of Trade and Integration, argued in a Nov. 6 brief to the appellate court. TKT said that it needs the extra words to respond to briefs from both the U.S. and petitioners Globe Specialty Metals and Mississippi Silicon because, contrary to Globe's suggestion, the briefs don't make identical arguments (Tau-Ken Temir v. U.S., Fed. Cir. # 22-2204).
The Commerce Department's cross-owned input supplier analysis in a case on the 2018 countervailing duty review of steel concrete reinforcing bar from Turkey "has a direct and precedential bearing" on the Court of International Trade's decision in the case on the 2020 review of the same order, exporter Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret told the trade court (Kaptan Demir Celik Endustrisi ve Ticaret v. United States, CIT # 22-00149).
The Court of International Trade on Nov. 7 dismissed an antidumping duty case from lumber importer West Fraser Mills for failure to file a complaint by the time limits set in court rules. West Fraser was challenging the Commerce Department's 2021 review of the antidumping duty order on softwood lumber products from Canada (West Fraser Mills v. U.S., CIT # 23-00209).
The following lawsuit was recently filed at the Court of International Trade:
The Court of International Trade granted importer Time After Time Manufacturing's motion to dismiss its own customs case concerning its entries of plant carts. The importer filed the case in September, arguing that its plant carts of Harmonized Tariff Schedule subheading 9403.20.0050, free of duty, and secondary subheading 9903.88.03, subject to 25% Section 301 duties, qualify for subheadings 9817.00.5000 and 9403.20.0050, both free of duty (Time After Time Manufacturing v. U.S., CIT # 23-00203).