Trade Court Grants Indefinite Injunction Against Liquidation in Challenge to AD Mattress Order

The Court of International Trade in a Feb. 14 order granted an injunction until the conclusion of litigation against the liquidation of two plaintiffs' mattress imports. The Department of Justice pushed back against that timeline. It urged an end date of April 30, the same end date as the first administrative review period of the antidumping duty order the plaintiffs are contesting. Judge Gary Katzmann said that the plaintiffs, Best Mattresses International and Rose Lion Furniture International, sufficiently showed a likelihood to succeed on the merits of the case and that they would be irreparably harmed without the indefinite injunction.

The plaintiffs are contesting the AD order on mattresses from Cambodia in which they served as the two mandatory respondents. They are challenging the Commerce Department's use of surrogate country data rather than the plaintiffs' data and the agency's analysis of their expenses and expense-to-profit ratios, among other things. Best Mattresses and Rose Lion said that without an injunction, if they don't participate in the first administrative review of the AD order, all their entries from Nov. 3, 2020, to April 30, 2022 -- the review's end date -- would be liquidated, causing irreparable harm. DOJ said that an injunction wasn't necessary to counter this harm since liquidation is "necessarily suspended" until the end of the first review period.

The court said, as it has in the past, that the threat of liquidation in light of judicial review constitutes irreparable harm. "The same is true here," Katzmann said. "Here, the magnitude of the injury -- liquidation of all of Plaintiffs’ entered or withdrawn merchandise spanning a period of eighteen months, as well as of Plaintiffs’ future entries -- is substantial. Similarly, future relief is inadequate."

The threat of injury is also "sufficiently immediate," the judge said. If the plaintiffs don't request an administrative review, their entries will liquidate April 30, but the court has said that securing the full benefits of judicial review should not require participation in each administrative review. As such, the irreparable harm identified by the plaintiffs is enough to meet the burden of showing irreparable harm, Katzmann said.

(Best Mattresses International Company Limited v. U.S., Slip Op. 22-11, CIT #21-00281, dated 02/14/22, Judge Gary Katzmann. Attorneys: Jeffrey Grimson of Mowry & Grimson for plaintiffs and defendant-intervenors Best Mattresses International Company and Rose Lion Furniture International Company; Kara Westercamp for defendant U.S. government; Yohai Baisburd of Cassidy Levy for defendant-intervenors and consolidated plaintiffs led by Brooklyn Bedding)