Plaintiffs in a conflict-of-interest suit asked the Court of International Trade for an injunction barring attorney Daniel Pickard and his firm Buchanan Ingersoll from participating in a set of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations before the International Trade Commission. Filing a motion for injunction pending appeal after the trade court dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds, the plaintiffs, led by Amsted Rail Co., argued that they're likely to succeed on appeal since, at the very least, they raised serious legal questions, warranting a stay order from the court. The plaintiffs also claimed that the court erred by illegally shifting the burden to the plaintiffs to identify specific times ARC shared confidential information with Pickard and Buchanan (Amsted Rail Co. v. United States, CIT # 22-00307).

Two Commerce Department redeterminations excluding certain ductile iron flanges from the scope of a 2003 antidumping duty order were found unsatisfactory by the Court of International Trade, since they "are not in a form in which the court could sustain" them, according to two Nov. 18 orders by Judge Timothy Stanceu. Since Commerce said on remand that it will issue a revised scope ruling if the remand submissions are affirmed, the agency is looking for approval of a decision that is not a scope determination but "instead is preliminary to such a decision." As a result, the decision "could not be put into effect should it be sustained," and Commerce would "escape direct judicial review," the judge said.

The Commerce Department must reconsider its decision to deny plaintiff GreenFirst Forest Products' request for a successor-in-interest changed circumstances review in a countervailing duty case, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Nov. 18 opinion. In defending its decision, Commerce cited its "significant change" practice, under which it says it will not start a CCR where there is evidence of a significant change that could have affected the nature of subsidization. Judge Claire Kelly ruled that "it is unclear" why this practice applies since the successor company did not have an individually calculated rate.

The Court of International Trade erred when it dismissed a case brought by importer Rimco over alleged "excessive fines" leveled by CBP for the combination of antidumping and countervailing duty rates on steel wheels from China, Rimco argued in a Nov. 14 brief before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The Commerce Department properly held and explained that antidumping duty respondent Dongkuk S&C Co.'s reported steel plate costs do not reasonably reflect the cost of making wind towers in an antidumping duty investigation, the Court of International Trade ruled in a Nov. 17 opinion. Judge Leo Gordon also held that Commerce properly used exporter SeAH Steel Holdings Corp.'s 2018 consolidated financial statement as the basis for constructed value calculations for Dongkuk's profit and selling expenses.

The Commerce Department will revisit its approach to "analyzing and determining the existence of a [particular market situation] that distorts costs of production" in antidumping duty proceedings, given the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit's opinion in Nexteel v. United States. Releasing an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in the Nov. 18 Federal Register, Commerce said that it is seeking public comments on what evidence it should and shouldn't consider when finding whether a PMS exists that supports the COP and when the amount of distortion in the COP caused by a PMS cannot be quantified based on the record.

The Court of International Trade on Nov. 16 released the public version of its Nov. 15 opinion dismissing a conflict-of-interest suit filed by plaintiffs led by Amsted Rail Company seeking to removeDaniel Pickard and his firm Buchanan Ingersoll from an International Trade Commission injury proceeding for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. Judge Gary Katzmann ruled that while the court does have the jurisdiction to review the ITC's decision to grant Pickard and Buchanan access to business proprietary information (BPI), it does not have this jurisdiction under Section 1581(i) -- the court's "residual" jurisdiction. The judge left the door open for the plaintiffs to refile their case under Section 1581(c) "once a claim under" this provision "is ripe."

The Commerce Department continued to rely on antidumping duty respondent Dillinger France's normal books and records as facts otherwise available to fill in missing cost of production data. Submitting remand results on Nov. 16 to the Court of International Trade, Commerce said that using Dillinger's normal books and records to value both prime and non-prime merchandise "is the only reasonable approach" since it recognizes that where Dillinger cannot make all its merchandise perfectly, the lost value of the imperfect products is actually a cost of making the perfect goods "and should be accounted for as such" (Dillinger France S.A. v. United States, CIT #17-00159)

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The Court of International Trade in a Nov. 15 judgment dismissed Amsted Rail's conflict-of-interest case against its former counsel for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Concurrently filing a confidential opinion but a public order, Judge Gary Katzmann said the plaintiffs can refile under Section 1581(c). The case was originally filed under Section 1581(i), the court's "residual" jurisdiction (Amsted Rail v. U.S., CIT #22-00307).