Former Trade Manager Seeks Jury Trial Over Contested Firing for Stance on Section 301 Tariffs

Counsel for Jennifer Lam-Quang-Vinh, a customs broker and former senior manager of Global Trade and Customs at Springs Window Fashions, a producer and seller of window coverings, pushed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit to set up a jury trial over whether she was unlawfully fired. During an April 27 oral argument, counsel for Lam continued to make the case that she was illegally let go from her job for expressing her view that the company's window shades imports should be assessed Section 301 China tariffs and that a jury should look at the case (Jennifer Lam-Quang-Vinh v. Springs Window Fashions, W.D. Wis. #21-2665).

In the summer of 2019, Lam brought up a country-of-origin issue for certain fabrics Springs used that were supplied by a company called Teh Yor, according to Lam's opening brief. Lam said the country of origin of the fabrics was China and as such, the goods would be subject to the 25% Section 301 tariffs. However, Teh Yor said that the country of origin was actually Taiwan or Malaysia. Lam disagreed and was continuously "scolded" for this position.

Eventually, Lam was fired, leading her to file a Whistleblower Retaliation action under the False Claims Act. However, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin granted Springs' motion for judgment, dismissing the action. Lam brought her case to the 7th Circuit, arguing now for a jury trial over her termination.

"A jury could find that Springs’s CEO ... was angry with Lam for her insistence that China was legally the country of origin of the window shades Springs assembled at its plants in Mexico, because this meant that Springs should be paying costly tariffs on these products, so he did what he had done in the case of her predecessor and reached down the chain of command to direct, implicitly or explicitly, adverse personnel actions against her culminating in her termination," Lam said in the opening brief. "He was, in fact, so irate that he verbally bludgeoned Lam on multiple occasions, which is actionable retaliation in itself.

"Springs’s stated grounds for Lam’s termination are built on misrepresentations and deviations from expected procedures, and, given that the only evidence of displeasure with Lam, before her termination was decided in the fall of 2019, related to her tariff stance, a jury could easily find them to be pretextual." Lam's counsel, Jeff Olson, continued this argument at oral argument, vying for a jury trial. The court, in a text-only order, said the case is "heard and taken under advisement."