Petitioner Accuses Exporter of Late Remand Comments in German Forged Steel Case

A petitioner told the court Feb. 2 that an exporter had filed its remand comments late because it replied in the response time allocated for defendant-intervenors, but had argued in its secondary capacity as a plaintiff. The exporter disagreed, saying it had been “clearly identified” as a defendant-intervenor by the court (Ellwood City Forge Co. v. U.S., CIT # 21-00077).

When ordering a second remand of the Commerce Department’s antidumping duty investigation on forged steel fluid end blooks from Germany, the Court of International Trade in August 2023 ordered that plaintiffs would have 30 days to respond after filing of the remand results; defendants would have 15 days to respond after filing of plaintiffs’ reply; and defendant-intervenors would have 15 days to respond after the filing of defendants’ reply.

However, petitioner and plaintiff/defendant-intervenor Ellwood City Forge argued that exporter BGH Edelstahl Siegen, who is also both a defendant-intervenor and plaintiff in the case, responded in part as a plaintiff when it filed its reply in the 15-day period after defendant U.S. government’s.

The caption of the court’s remanding opinion, which called BGH a “Defendant-Intervenor/Plaintiff,” “clearly” labeled BGH as a plaintiff, Ellwood said. It said that a “large majority” of BGH’s reply mimicked arguments it had made in its opening brief as a plaintiff in the case.

This “untimely” response prevented Ellwood and other defendant-intervenors from rebutting any of BGH’s claims, the petitioner said. It asked the court to either strike that portion of BGH’s submission or let it and the other defendant-intervenors reply again.

In turn, BGH said its response had not been untimely because “the Court clearly identified the parties at the beginning of the opinion,” and “the parties represented by the law firm deKieffer & Horgan, PLLC were identified as ‘Defendant-Intervenor’ (i.e., ‘BGH’).”

“This is precisely the same procedure that was followed with respect to the first remand redetermination, where BGH filed its comments under the deadline set for ‘Defendant Intervenor’ and also raised its arguments concerning the lack of legal and factual support for Commerce’s cost-based PMS adjustments,” BGH said.