COVID-19 Constraints Spurred Lawyer to File Spate of Section 301 Suits
The lawyer who filed dozens of Section 301 complaints on a single day at the U.S. Court of International Trade (see 2011200023) said his spate of filings had more to do with the constraints of working remotely during the pandemic…
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than any rush to meet the court’s filing deadlines. Attorney Elon Pollack of Stein Shostak in Los Angeles filed most of the new cases on behalf of importers with List 4A tariff exposure, leaving List 3 claims out of his complaints. He designated Aug. 20, 2019, when the List 4A notice was published in the Federal Register, as the date the court’s two-year statute of limitations clock began ticking. He said he believes the two-year statute of limitations runs from the date an importer actually paid the tariffs, not when the duties were announced. All Pollack’s complaints, like the roughly 3,700 others filed since Sept. 10, allege that the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative overstepped its 1974 Trade Act authority by imposing retaliatory tariffs against the Chinese and that the agency violated the Administrative Procedure Act by running sloppy rulemakings that lacked transparency. The Section 301 litigation seeks to get the rulemakings vacated and the tariffs refunded. Pollack said his cases will be included under whatever test case and procedures the court designates for the Section 301 litigation. His filings list the first-filed suit by HTMX in the Section 301 litigation as a related case.