Picture Frame Importer Says US Motion to Dismiss a ‘Mischaracterization’ of Its Complaint

A U.S. motion to dismiss an importer's challenge of the way CBP handled liquidation after a prior disclosure amounts to a “mischaracterization” of its complaint, and the Court of International Trade also had jurisdiction over the case pursuant to the Customs Courts Act of 1980, the importer said (Larson-Juhl US v. U.S., CIT # 23-00032).

Picture frame company Larson-Juhl said it missed AD/CVD orders on nine of its entries when it imported them between 2020 and 2021. To rectify its mistake, it submitted a prior disclosure letter to CBP and paid it more than $2 million in accordance with the China-wide AD and all-others CVD rates of 220.87% and 20.56%, respectively, on its products. In the letter, it asked for CBP to suspend liquidation and redesignate its entries from type 01 to type 03, intending to seek an administrative review for a separate rate.

However, CBP liquidated entries before it could and denied its subsequent protest, for which the importer brought the U.S. to the Court of International Trade in 2023 (see 2303310056).

The government on Jan. 8 filed a motion to dismiss Larson-Juhl’s case, saying the “true nature” of the company’s claim for eight of its entries regarded “CBP’s acceptance of its prior disclosure and voluntary tender payment,” over which CIT doesn't have jurisdiction (see 2401100068). It also said that the importer’s claim regarding its ninth entry lacked standing because the plaintiff suffered no injury.

Larson-Juhl said it doesn't intend to contest the government’s argument about its ninth entry.

Otherwise, it disagreed with the motion. It said that it had brought its action to challenge CBP’s denial of its protest and “failure to designate the protested entries as Type 03 despite CBP’s acceptance of Larson-Juhl’s prior disclosure and its tender of AD/CVD duties” and despite instructions from the Commerce Department to do so during Commerce’s initial investigation.

It said it had done all that it needed to in order to bring a case to CIT under 28 U.S.C. § 1581(a) -- file a “valid and timely protest."

The government also said that Larson-Juhl should have filed a post-summary correction along with its prior disclosure to ensure that its entries’ types were updated before liquidation. However, the post-summary correction process “has never been codified into the Customs regulations,” Larson-Juhl said, so it shouldn't have been excluded from making a protest.

“Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss is a clear example of failing to see the forest for the trees,” it said. “Defendant exhaustively devotes 15 pages to manipulate the procedural posture of this dispute into an issue related to CBP’s entry and prior disclosure procedures.”

However, assuming arguendo that CIT found otherwise, dismissal of the case still would not be the right answer, the importer said. Instead, it said the court should allow it to revise its complaint so that it could assert jurisdiction “arising from the Court’s broad residual subject matter jurisdiction conferred by the Customs Courts Act of 1980.”

“The Court possesses sweeping subject matter jurisdiction ‘to decide any civil action against the United States, its officers, or its agencies arising out of any law pertaining to international trade,’” it said, citing several of the court’s websites.