Defendant Intervenors Oppose PET Sheet Producers' Motion to Limit Remand Replies in AD Case

Advanced Extrusion, Ex-Tech Plastics and Multi-Plastics Extrusions, defendant-intervenors in an antidumping case, opposed plaintiff OCTAL's motion to expand the word limit and ability to submit reply comments to the Commerce Department's remand results. The intervenors said in an Aug. 24 brief that OCTAL's comment schedule would “improperly extinguish” their opportunity to comment on the remand results, which could prejudice their rights on appeal (OCTAL, Inc., et al. v. United States, CIT #20-03697).

OCTAL requested an additional 4,000 words for its remand reply. The defendant-intervenors said this had no rationale and the current remand rules give OCTAL “sufficient opportunity to comment on the results of Commerce’s deliberations and present argument as to how the Court should rule on such results. ... Plaintiffs’ motion is nothing more than a veiled attempt to relitigate the scope of the Court’s Remand Order,” the brief said. “Plaintiffs ignore that this appeal is in a different posture than it was when initiated -- namely, that Commerce has since accepted comment on and considered the very same arguments regarding affiliation that Plaintiffs made in their Rule 56.2 motion for judgment on the agency record.”

In the remand results -- in a case over an antidumping duty investigation into polyethylene terephthalate sheet from Oman in which OCTAL was the only respondent -- Commerce continued to find affiliation between OCTAL and one of its U.S. customers (see 2108030059). The agency voluntarily remanded the case to consider OCTAL's comments, yet maintained its determination using neutral facts available.