Greenlight Organic Seeks Motion to Compel on Requests for Admissions in Customs Avoidance Case

Greenlight Organic accused the U.S. government of invoking various "evasive tactics" in avoiding providing sufficient answers to the company's requests for admissions (RFAs) in a Court of International Trade case over the importer's alleged misclassification of imports to skirt duties. In a July 23 motion to compel the U.S. to respond to Greenlight's 116 RFAs, the importer wants the court to force the government to issue responses and overturn its objections that the requests were "incoherent and prevented a meaningful response" (United States v. Greenlight Organic, Inc. et al., CIT #17-00031).

The government initially brought the case over Greenlight's entries of Vietnam-origin knit garments, claiming that the importer committed fraud in misclassifying the goods as woven garments and undervaluing the goods. Greenlight sought to use the discovery process to "get information that it was entitled to by law and to narrow the issue." The subjects of the discovery include instructive manuals that guide government conduct in a Section 1592 investigation, a detailed privilege log, properly redacted documents listed within such a privilege log and a complete response to Greenlight's production requests, the motion said.

All but three of these RFAs were summarily rejected by the government, which claimed that many of the requests were "vague or ambiguous," amid other objections. The U.S. objected to Greenlight's use of many phrases, including "fraud claim," "fraudulent undervaluation," and "undervaluation details." "The Government’s ambiguity claim regarding these phrases is without merit as they are the basis for their entire case before this Court," the motion said. "As stated in plaintiff’s Second Amended Complaint, the Government brought this case for fraud arising out of the alleged undervaluation and misclassification of knit goods as woven goods. To now say that these terms are ambiguous is an ill-founded attempt to avoid responding to the substance of the RFAs. Such evasiveness must be remedied by requiring the Government to provide sufficient answers to the requests."

The first 33 of the RFAs sought to reveal that a number of the entries in the case aren't covered by the allegations of misclassification or undervaluation in the amended complaint by comparing the government's entry documents and the database Greenlight constructed through the Freedom of Information Act. "These denials are unacceptable because the Government has entry records in its possession that should have enabled the Government to consult its own [database] to admit these RFAs," the motion said. "The Government responses also ignore the information included in Exhibits 1 and 2 which are purported to identify the details of the misclassification and undervaluation for each of the individual entries in this case."