Turkish Steel Exporter Continues to Push for CIT to Overturn AD Questionnaire Rejections

The Commerce Department's rejection of questionnaire responses in antidumping and a countervailing duty cases filed 21 and 87 minutes late was unreasonable and a "miscarriage of justice," Turkish steel exporter Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi said in two Aug. 24 reply briefs. In particular, defendant-intervenors, led by Insteel Wire Products Company, wrongly speculated about Celik Halat's counsel's awareness of the time zone at his residence in Utah, leading to three entire days for which Celik Halat had to submit the questionnaire responses. Rather, the filing deficiencies stem from an emergency medical procedure and not a time zone mishap, Celik Halat said (Celik Halat ve Tel Sanayi A.S. v. United States, CIT #21-00045, #21-00050).

The lawsuit challenges the antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on prestressed concrete steel wire strand from Turkey, for which Celik Halat was a mandatory respondent. The exporter missed the filing deadlines for certain questionnaire responses in the AD/CVD investigations by 21 and 87 minutes, respectively. In its motion for judgment in the case (see 2106010053), the exporter dubbed the rejections a "severe abuse of discretion."

The Department of Justice and the defendant-intervenors countered this claim, citing Celik Halat's own admission that a mistimed filing deadline alarm, due to confusion over Mountain and Eastern time, as having caused the filing delay (see 2107290072). Since there was no "unexpected event" that led to the mistimed filing, the assertion that the medical condition was the root cause of the delayed filing is incorrect, DOJ said.

Not addressing this claim directly in its response, Celik Halat said that the rejections were an abuse of discretion, nonetheless. "Counsel set alarms to wake him to file the final BPI and public versions -- but counsel inadvertently did not account for the different time zones," one of the briefs said. "Commerce severely abused its discretion by rejecting the filing when it should have acknowledged the timely BPI filing and simply been understanding of counsel’s medical emergency, as it has done with past cases. While it may have been indifferent to counsel’s medical circumstances, Commerce’s callous approach is not permitted under the law, and Defendant should be rebuked for this miscarriage of justice."

Further, judicial precedent does not back Commerce's holding that it can reject all untimely filings regardless of the length of the delay, the exporter argued. "Commerce cites a number of cases that it contends supports its decision to reject Celik Halat’s entire Sections B and C questionnaire response based on the 21-minute late filing of a single exhibit," the briefs said. "But all of the cases cited by Commerce involve far lengthier delays, agency burden and finality issues. These cases hold that Commerce must weigh the interests of accuracy and fairness over finality and burden, which the agency did not do in this case."