No Open-Ended Injunction for Mattress Importer in AD Case, CIT Rules

The Court of International Trade in a March 28 decision denied mattress importer Ashley Furniture Industries and its foreign manufacturers a request for an open-ended injunction in an antidumping duty case. Judge Timothy Reif said that the plaintiffs failed to show that the threat of liquidation posed immediate irreparable harm and that they clearly had a likelihood to succeed on the merits of the case. The decision cuts against two other CIT decisions granting an open-ended injunction.

The case concerns the antidumping duty investigation on mattresses from Vietnam. At CIT, Ashley moved for a statutory injunction with no end date, seeking to cover all future entries that could be subject to the review. Following consultations between counsel for Ashley and the U.S., DOJ said that it consents to an injunction for the unliquidated entries through the end of the first administrative review period (see 2108230059).

Ashley argued that it needed the open-ended injunction due to the "presently existing" threat of injury via liquidation that runs from the minute Commerce publishes the antidumping duty order. Reif said that this threat was not imminent since an injunction that runs until the end of the first administrative review would leave the earliest date at which any entries could be liquidated as July 6, 2023 -- the date at which the second review period would be concluded.

The plaintiffs sought to bolster their argument by pointing to three other CIT opinions -- two of which saw the court indefinitely enjoin Commerce from liquidating the imports. In one of them involving Mid-Continent, the trade court granted the open-ended injunction since the parties established an existing, actual threat of irreparable harm for all subsequent reviews. Reif said that this decision is "factually dissimilar" to the case at hand since this injunction was only granted five years into litigation.

Reif then held that the threat of liquidation is not "actual" as the plaintiffs claim since both of the reasons offered for such a claim are "speculative." The plaintiffs said that the entries face an actual threat of liquidation that picks up as litigation proceeds since the AD rate applies to all entries equally, even those that have not yet been made, and that it is not reasonable to assume the plaintiffs will make certain decisions that could affect whether this rate will still apply in the future. Ashley and company also said that an error by the U.S. could result in premature liquidation, which poses an "acutal, non-speculative threat" of liquidation.

"The fact that none of the scenarios that plaintiffs postulate indicates an actual, non-speculative threat of irreparable harm, added to the fact that plaintiffs have not even made any of the four stages of decisions as to which, if any, of the scenarios may actually happen, makes clear that the threat of irreparable harm is speculative and not “actual” and, therefore, there is not a basis in law to grant the injunction requested by plaintiffs," the judge said.

Since the likelihood of irreparable harm was not established, Reif said that the threshold to show that the plaintiff is likely to succeed on the merits is raised. As such, the judge said, the case does not clearly favor the plaintiffs and so said that the court was not likely to rule in favor of the plaintiffs. Reif did so without jumping into the specifics of the case.

The court concluded by saying that, while the balance of equities do favor the plaintiffs, the public interest in issuing an open-ended injunction does not and that such an injunction could not be issued. "In the instant case, plaintiffs do not establish that their proposed injunction is required to preserve the status quo during the judicial proceedings, as an injunction of limited scope would accomplish the same objective," the judge said.

(Ashley Furniture Industries, et al. v. United States, Slip Op. 22-29, CIT #21-00283, dated 03/28/22, Judge Timothy Reif. Attorneys: Kristin Mowry of Mowry & Grimson for plaintiffs; Kara Westercamp for defendant U.S. government)