[00:00:00] Speaker 01:
Mr. Gordon.

[00:00:03] Speaker 01:
May it please the Court.

[00:00:23] Speaker 04:
The Trade Court in the proceedings below abused its discretion in two important ways.

[00:00:29] Speaker 04:
First, it abused its discretion when it consolidated the hearing on the preliminary injunction motion filed by Oman Fasteners with a trial on the merits.

[00:00:38] Speaker 04:
Second, it abused its discretion by finding that Oman Fasteners had satisfied the very high standard to obtain the drastic and extraordinary relief of injunctive relief.

[00:00:47] Speaker 01:
I think before we go into either of those two points, I need you to focus on standing for me.

[00:00:53] Speaker 04:
Certainly.

[00:01:00] Speaker 04:
We would submit that we unquestionably have standing, Article 3 standing, to appear before this Court in this Appeal.

[00:01:09] Speaker 04:
Standing may exist solely by virtue of statutes creating legal rights, the invasion of which creates standing.

[00:01:13] Speaker 04:
That's a large reason to be seldom.

[00:01:16] Speaker 04:
Mid-Continent, our client, has the statutory right to seek redress from unfair trade practices through the trade laws.

[00:01:24] Speaker 04:
We are one of the intended beneficiaries of the remedial effects of the anti-dumping and countervailing due to laws that are included in the Tariff Act.

[00:01:32] Speaker 04:
Our intervention at the trade court below was premised on three different statutory provisions as a matter of right.

[00:01:38] Speaker 04:
28 USC 2631J, 19 USC 1516A F3,

[00:01:44] Speaker 04:
and 19 USC 16779C.

[00:01:47] Speaker 01:
I guess my question is, that gives you an intervener right to become enmeshed in the decision below.

[00:02:01] Speaker 01:
But how does that create a right to standing on appeal?

[00:02:05] Speaker 04:
Well, I mean, I would cite to the Supreme Court Stringfellow case where the court held that an intervener normally has the right to appeal an adverse final judgment by a trial court.

[00:02:15] Speaker 01:
Yes, but this judgment wasn't directly adverse to you.

[00:02:18] Speaker 01:
It was inferentially adverse to you.

[00:02:20] Speaker 01:
You think it had third party impact on you.

[00:02:23] Speaker 01:
But the judgment here was an injunction involving the government.

[00:02:27] Speaker 01:
Your client wasn't actually impacted by the decision from a legal standpoint.

[00:02:35] Speaker 01:
that would give it a right to appeal.

[00:02:36] Speaker 01:
It was impacted inferentially or tangentially or factually because once the injunction went into place, they could resume importing and once the injunction, whatever, what happened below, they could resume importing after that.

[00:02:50] Speaker 01:
And that put your client at competitive disadvantage.

[00:02:53] Speaker 01:
But the injunction had nothing to do with your client directly as a beneficiary of the injunction.

[00:02:59] Speaker 04:
No, but I think there is

[00:03:02] Speaker 04:
Injury, in fact, by virtue of the distortions to the marketplace resulting from the change in the... So my problem with that concept is that extends to all competitors.

[00:03:10] Speaker 01:
Injury, in fact, right?

[00:03:11] Speaker 01:
Like, so here's the deal.

[00:03:14] Speaker 01:
You're in a two-party market and they get penalized for some major EPA violation.

[00:03:20] Speaker 01:
And if they don't have to pay that, if they have to pay that penalty, it's going to cause them to drive their prices way up and you're going to be in a much more competitive advantage.

[00:03:27] Speaker 01:
If they don't have to pay that penalty,

[00:03:30] Speaker 01:
you're at a disadvantage because they can lower their prices.

[00:03:34] Speaker 01:
My concern with what you just said is that it opens this ginormous standing loophole for anyone that can say, I'm a competitor, and if the government goes after them for something, that's to my benefit.

[00:03:48] Speaker 04:
In response, Your Honor, I would cite to this court's decision in the Canadian Trade Lumber Alliance case, where this had to do with distributions under the Continued Subsidy and Offset Act.

[00:04:01] Speaker 04:
In that case, the court found that the Canadian Lumber Trade Alliance had standing.

[00:04:05] Speaker 04:
Did they get the money?

[00:04:07] Speaker 04:
Sorry?

[00:04:08] Speaker 04:
This is the Byrd Amendment?

[00:04:09] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:04:09] Speaker 04:
Where they actually get the money?

[00:04:10] Speaker 04:
Yeah, the domestic industry was given the money.

[00:04:13] Speaker 04:
In this case, Amman Fasteners was relieved from having to make.

[00:04:16] Speaker 04:
Right, but you don't get the money.

[00:04:18] Speaker 04:
Not in this case, not directly.

[00:04:20] Speaker 04:
Right.

[00:04:20] Speaker 04:
Yeah.

[00:04:21] Speaker 01:
But in that case... That's why they were standing.

[00:04:23] Speaker 01:
In that case, they were directly impacted by the actual decision in terms of money changing hands.

[00:04:30] Speaker 01:
Well, and I would say we're directly impacted by the actual decision of the trade... No, you're impacted in the competitive market, ultimately, by their competition.

[00:04:38] Speaker 01:
But you're not impacted by the injunction itself.

[00:04:42] Speaker 04:
Not technically.

[00:04:43] Speaker 04:
That injunction when joined the Commerce Department from assigning the

[00:04:47] Speaker 04:
the lawfully assigned adverse rate of 154%.

[00:04:51] Speaker 02:
And am I remembering the facts right, that from late December, whenever commerce imposed this cash deposit until the mid-February injunction, Oman basically stopped importing?

[00:05:07] Speaker 04:
They did not stop importing.

[00:05:08] Speaker 04:
They did not?

[00:05:09] Speaker 04:
Well, they said they were going to, if I'm correct.

[00:05:12] Speaker 04:
But I don't believe they stopped.

[00:05:13] Speaker 04:
And then when the injunction was imposed, they continued to import.

[00:05:18] Speaker 04:
official import data and Oman Fasteners is by far the biggest and maybe the single only nail producer in Oman, you see continued significant imports in the period of time in which that artificially low

[00:05:32] Speaker 02:
our cash deposit rate was in effect that remained in effect and i'm i'm actually asking about the two-month period where the artificially high one wants to call it cash deposit rate was in effect i thought it was clear it did i thought they'd essentially stopped importing or at least dramatically reduced so that's that is correct okay so that

[00:05:52] Speaker 02:
Again, this would be what is known as a friendly question.

[00:05:56] Speaker 02:
That's why it's clear that though it requires an additional step, you've suffered injury, in fact, from the injunction.

[00:06:07] Speaker 02:
Because suddenly, all these imports were coming in.

[00:06:11] Speaker 02:
Before, the imports were not coming in.

[00:06:14] Speaker 02:
That's correct.

[00:06:17] Speaker 02:
Is injury, in fact, and I'm going to put aside causation and refreshability, which I think are clear, is that the end of the jurisdictional requirement of standing

[00:06:33] Speaker 02:
As opposed to, you know, the word standing sometimes applies to what's sometimes called statutory standing, though less often because it's confusing.

[00:06:43] Speaker 02:
Um, jurisdictional stuff, we have no choice but to demand.

[00:06:49] Speaker 02:
Yes.

[00:06:49] Speaker 02:
We do have some sort of choice about non-jurisdictional, um, who has a interest kind of issues, uh, that sometimes go by the name of standing.

[00:07:03] Speaker 04:
It is very clear, and as we discussed in our reply brief, that this court has jurisdiction unquestionably in this case.

[00:07:12] Speaker 04:
We would cite to the Wintower Trade Coalition case, where we say that dispenses with any challenge to the court's jurisdiction.

[00:07:20] Speaker 04:
And I'll read a brief quote from that case.

[00:07:22] Speaker 04:
Sections 1292A, 1292C1, and 1295 in conjunction confer jurisdiction upon this court

[00:07:31] Speaker 04:
over appeals of interlocutory orders issued by the CIT granting, modifying, refusing, or dissolving injunctions.

[00:07:39] Speaker 02:
And this would be an injunction against somebody other than the appellant?

[00:07:44] Speaker 02:
I don't think so.

[00:07:45] Speaker 02:
It doesn't, right?

[00:07:47] Speaker 02:
Oh, no.

[00:07:48] Speaker 02:
Obviously, we have statutory jurisdiction if a case is brought to us challenging a interlocutory order that would be appealable under 1292

[00:08:00] Speaker 02:
the regional courts of appeals that the statute actually says that.

[00:08:04] Speaker 02:
But that doesn't answer the question of whether you're a proper party to bring that.

[00:08:09] Speaker 02:
What I'm trying to focus on is whether, on the assumption that you do have injury in fact,

[00:08:17] Speaker 02:
those the usual trio of Article III requirements.

[00:08:22] Speaker 02:
But sometimes there's a little bit of an addition of a legally protected interest that's sometimes put into the Article III formulation.

[00:08:31] Speaker 02:
I don't know.

[00:08:33] Speaker 02:
And that's where I think the kind of concern that the Chief Judge was raising sort of fits

[00:08:42] Speaker 04:
Well, I'd say that Mid-Continent has a legally protected interest here by virtue of its standing as an interested party to seek redress under the trade laws.

[00:08:52] Speaker 02:
And the fact that the trial courts actually- And maybe that might not be true in the kind of EPA penalty situation that the chief was bringing up as an analogy for how to think about

[00:09:10] Speaker 02:
whether this kind of bystander is entitled to complain about lack of insufficient government harm to its competitor.

[00:09:19] Speaker 04:
Yeah, that would be different because we have sort of a statutory right, if you will, to seek redress and to petition the government for redress from unfair trade practices and in fact make comment as the petitioner

[00:09:32] Speaker 04:
has litigated this case since 2014, as well as other cases like it, in order to offset the injurious impact.

[00:09:43] Speaker 04:
When I say injurious impact, that was specifically found by the International Trade Commission of these unfairly traded imports.

[00:09:51] Speaker 02:
And there's one other kind of pre-meritsy issue that's been raised here, the mootness question.

[00:09:57] Speaker 02:
Do I understand your position to be that even though on a going forward basis, imports are subject now to a new, quite low cash deposit, maybe even zero, but anyway, something very small, that doesn't make

[00:10:14] Speaker 02:
your challenge to this injunction moot, because for purposes of mootness, we assume you'll win on your challenge.

[00:10:25] Speaker 02:
And then there's a possibility, unlitigated yet, that the trial court

[00:10:31] Speaker 02:
might require retrospective cash deposits to put OMON in the position it would have been and had the, again by assumption, incorrect injunction never been issued.

[00:10:46] Speaker 02:
And that money might actually make a difference for the periods covered that are not yet subject to a final, no longer appealable determination of

[00:11:00] Speaker 02:
the proper duty rate.

[00:11:07] Speaker 04:
You're correct.

[00:11:09] Speaker 04:
This case is not moot.

[00:11:12] Speaker 04:
And because it's a matter of timing, the artificially low cash deposit rate that commerce was ordered to impose, that covered entries that came in until

[00:11:27] Speaker 04:
December 11 of 2023 when the next review was finished and reset the rate.

[00:11:32] Speaker 04:
That period of time from, say, mid-February to December 11, entries came in that are covered by both the eighth review and the ninth review.

[00:11:42] Speaker 04:
Both of those reviews are still underway.

[00:11:44] Speaker 04:
The eighth review just went to its preliminary determination in August, and the ninth review only just began.

[00:11:49] Speaker 04:
And if you look at the, again, the official public import data, you can see that the

[00:11:54] Speaker 04:
volumes and values of nails from Amman are very substantial and our position would be that as a matter of its own regulatory requirements were the injunction to be dissolved and the cash deposit rate reinstated commerce would have to order the collection of the additional duty amounts in order to be

[00:12:13] Speaker 04:
consistent with its own regulations.

[00:12:15] Speaker 02:
But for purposes of mootness, we don't have to agree with you on that.

[00:12:19] Speaker 02:
We just have to think that that is an issue that is open to you to argue before the CIT.

[00:12:27] Speaker 04:
Yes.

[00:12:27] Speaker 04:
I wish you would agree with me about that.

[00:12:29] Speaker 01:
Can I get you to move on now, if you don't mind, because we're already in remittal time, and I want you to have a chance to address, and what I want you to move to is the injunction, the merits of the injunction.

[00:12:38] Speaker 01:
Skip over your argument about consolidation, please, and just go to the merits of the injunction.

[00:12:43] Speaker 04:
Certainly, Your Honor.

[00:12:44] Speaker 04:
Briefly, we think that the Trade Court abuses discretion in finding that Oman Fasteners satisfied the requirements of all of the four prongs.

[00:12:54] Speaker 04:
I'll start with the public interest prong because that goes right to the underlying merits.

[00:12:58] Speaker 04:
There, the Trade Court summarily found that

[00:13:04] Speaker 04:
Some really found that because it had found for a amount of fasteners on the merits, the government had no legitimate interest in collecting the cash deposits at the adverse facts available rate.

[00:13:12] Speaker 04:
As we discussed in detail in our brief, that merits analysis we feel is fundamentally and deeply flawed.

[00:13:18] Speaker 02:
It ignores the- And if we thought it was not flawed at all, or at least not flawed in a way that would change the remedy, that would

[00:13:35] Speaker 02:
a big hole in your argument, right?

[00:13:38] Speaker 04:
I put a hole in my argument, but there are four requirements that, four, there are four prongs of the of the test and the, and all I'm fastening is required to satisfy all four, not just one.

[00:13:50] Speaker 04:
And we, with respect, would you like me to move to the other factors?

[00:13:54] Speaker 04:
Sure.

[00:13:55] Speaker 04:
Okay, so let me just say that on the public interest and with respect to the merits, the record below is

[00:14:05] Speaker 04:
more clear than I've ever seen about the reasons why this filing deadline was missed.

[00:14:13] Speaker 04:
Oland-Fastones had received extensions of time more than doubling the amount of time it had to complete the filing.

[00:14:18] Speaker 01:
Okay, but which factor are you saying that this goes to?

[00:14:22] Speaker 01:
What you're discussing now is

[00:14:25] Speaker 01:
you know, sort of the good faith basis for being late.

[00:14:27] Speaker 01:
Which factor do you think this goes to?

[00:14:29] Speaker 04:
Well, that goes to the public interest factor, which the trade court said was satisfied because it had found Roman fasteners on the merits.

[00:14:38] Speaker 04:
So we have to discuss the merits in order to address that factor.

[00:14:42] Speaker 02:
But I thought you were

[00:14:44] Speaker 02:
But you asked me if you could go to other.

[00:14:46] Speaker 04:
Oh, I thought I was asking if you wanted to.

[00:14:47] Speaker 04:
Did you?

[00:14:48] Speaker 04:
OK, I will.

[00:14:49] Speaker 04:
Whatever you want to say.

[00:14:50] Speaker 01:
I was just trying to locate myself.

[00:14:54] Speaker 04:
My apologies.

[00:14:56] Speaker 04:
But on that factor, let me just say that the deadline was unquestionably missed.

[00:14:59] Speaker 04:
But more importantly, Oman Fasteners Council sat on their hands for over five weeks, ignoring that and hoping commerce wouldn't notice.

[00:15:07] Speaker 04:
But commerce did.

[00:15:08] Speaker 04:
That's at the heart of commerce's determination.

[00:15:10] Speaker 04:
There was no abusive discretion.

[00:15:11] Speaker 04:
Consistent with this court's holding in Dongtai Peak, what Commerce did was entirely appropriate as a matter of law, as well as on the facts of this case.

[00:15:23] Speaker 04:
Moving on to irreparable harm, our position is that the record shows that what Oman Fassiner claims of irreparable harm are entirely speculative.

[00:15:33] Speaker 04:
If you read the record carefully, it shows that the things they complain about either hadn't yet happened or

[00:15:40] Speaker 04:
where their claims are undermined by information evidence that we put on the record that the trial court never considered or addressed.

[00:15:47] Speaker 04:
So that's clear legal error for not having addressed or considered.

[00:15:49] Speaker 01:
Well, we'll wait past your time.

[00:15:51] Speaker 01:
Is there anything important that you need to address before you sit down?

[00:15:57] Speaker 04:
Let me just say briefly on the adequate remedies of law.

[00:16:00] Speaker 04:
We think it is clear that there are adequate remedies of law here in terms of- Not against the government, right?

[00:16:05] Speaker 04:
No, but they don't need to be against the government.

[00:16:08] Speaker 04:
If you look at the way eBay factor is described, it doesn't say adequate remedies of law against the government.

[00:16:14] Speaker 02:
Do you have any case?

[00:16:15] Speaker 02:
I mean, this injunction business is an adequate remedies of law comes up, I'm sure, actually, literally every single day in federal courts.

[00:16:23] Speaker 02:
Do you have any case law that says an adequate remedy of law can be an opportunity to recover money

[00:16:34] Speaker 02:
against some non-party for the same injury?

[00:16:40] Speaker 04:
As I stand here today, Your Honor, I don't have anything available to cite to you.

[00:16:45] Speaker 02:
That would be a little bit useful, right, on this point?

[00:16:48] Speaker 02:
That's the only issue on this point.

[00:16:50] Speaker 04:
OK.

[00:16:51] Speaker 04:
All right.

[00:16:52] Speaker 04:
And with that understanding that I'm probably out of time, I will sit down.

[00:16:56] Speaker 01:
Yep.

[00:16:56] Speaker 01:
Sounds great.

[00:16:58] Speaker 01:
And Mr. Houston?

[00:17:02] Speaker 01:
Is it Huston or Houston?

[00:17:03] Speaker 03:
It's pronounced Houston like the city, Your Honor.

[00:17:05] Speaker 01:
Got it.

[00:17:06] Speaker 03:
Not Houston like the city.

[00:17:10] Speaker 03:
It's like the more well-known city in Texas, Your Honor.

[00:17:14] Speaker 03:
May it please the court.

[00:17:14] Speaker 03:
I'm Michael Houston of Perkins County on behalf of my pastors.

[00:17:18] Speaker 03:
This case comes to this court in a very unusual procedural posture.

[00:17:22] Speaker 03:
This is an appeal of an injunction

[00:17:24] Speaker 03:
But the government is not here.

[00:17:26] Speaker 03:
The government has informed this court that it both will not appeal the preliminary injunction that was entered.

[00:17:32] Speaker 03:
It also will not appeal or challenge the final judgment that was entered upon remand.

[00:17:37] Speaker 02:
But I thought it was a tiny bit equivocal about that second thing, that its language was more like we have no plans to

[00:17:47] Speaker 02:
So that's fair enough, Your Honor.

[00:17:50] Speaker 03:
My understanding of the government's intentions is that it does not intend to participate.

[00:17:57] Speaker 03:
I suppose the government could change its mind, but I think the government has said it doesn't.

[00:18:00] Speaker 02:
If we were to find ourselves able to get to the merits here and conclude that the injunction was proper, would that resolve indirectly the state appeal of the final, final judgment?

[00:18:16] Speaker 03:
So it would certainly bear on it, Your Honor, in the sense that I think the court would be making a legal conclusion about the validity of the ultimate order.

[00:18:26] Speaker 03:
And that would, I think, bear on the ultimate determination.

[00:18:30] Speaker 03:
In this posture, the court is opining on the legality of the trade court's decision.

[00:18:37] Speaker 03:
I think it would certainly have strong cons.

[00:18:38] Speaker 03:
What I'm trying to say is I think it would go a long way.

[00:18:41] Speaker 03:
I think potentially there would be other findings.

[00:18:43] Speaker 02:
In the final appeal, the appeal from the final judgment, that's been stayed, right?

[00:18:49] Speaker 02:
It has by this court, Your Honor.

[00:18:52] Speaker 02:
Do you dispute that Mid-Continent can there argue that the district court's determination in the injunction proceeding

[00:19:04] Speaker 02:
about the impropriety of the imposition of a 154 rate.

[00:19:12] Speaker 02:
It can do that even though the government is no longer disputing that?

[00:19:18] Speaker 02:
We haven't briefed that issue, Your Honor.

[00:19:20] Speaker 02:
Isn't that something that happens, I don't know, on a regular, maybe not frequent basis where the government says, oh, sorry, we're not going to fight the

[00:19:29] Speaker 02:
You know, ruling number two, we're here on the final judgment.

[00:19:31] Speaker 02:
We're perfectly happy.

[00:19:32] Speaker 02:
And we allow the full party intervener to say that earlier decision was wrong.

[00:19:38] Speaker 02:
The government's no longer complaining about it, but it was wrong.

[00:19:42] Speaker 02:
And the consequence is that the final decision in front of us should never have been entered.

[00:19:47] Speaker 03:
So I think your honor is almost completely right, if I might suggest.

[00:19:51] Speaker 03:
I think the one thing that makes it a little more complicated

[00:19:53] Speaker 03:
It's the fact that some prongs of this legal determination are ultimately discretionary with commerce.

[00:19:58] Speaker 03:
For example, the Commerce Department has discretion if the court concludes contrary to the Trade Court's determination that commerce has discretion to impose an adverse inference, commerce is not required to do so.

[00:20:12] Speaker 03:
I think that complicates the analysis in fairness.

[00:20:14] Speaker 03:
I think that's what makes the case potentially different from the mind run of situations that Your Honor describes.

[00:20:19] Speaker 03:
But obviously, the case for mid-continent standing

[00:20:22] Speaker 03:
The state appeal is quite stronger.

[00:20:24] Speaker 03:
What's so striking about this appeal is that we're here on a preliminary injunction that the government isn't.

[00:20:29] Speaker 02:
So why shouldn't the standing question have the same answer to the final judgment in this case?

[00:20:39] Speaker 02:
The only difference is the remedial tool that's being used.

[00:20:44] Speaker 02:
It has the same effect.

[00:20:48] Speaker 02:
For two months when you were not importing, they were obviously benefited, and they were benefited in a way that

[00:20:57] Speaker 02:
you know, is the whole reason for the existence of this anti-dumping duty.

[00:21:02] Speaker 02:
It's a protective regime, right, to protect domestic industry.

[00:21:07] Speaker 02:
So why the difference just because the remedy here is running against the government as opposed to, I mean, the remedy also in the other one goes against, you know, the money's only collected by the government.

[00:21:22] Speaker 03:
So again, Your Honor, first of all, I think it's just a matter of

[00:21:25] Speaker 03:
I want to go directly to your honor's question with sort of a logical implication to it, but we haven't found precedent for the idea of, you know, an injunction entered against the government that the government's not appealing, that an intervener has been allowed to appeal, and I think obviously the Penda case, the Brooklyn Brewery case that are cited in our brief,

[00:21:41] Speaker 03:
hold exactly the opposite.

[00:21:43] Speaker 03:
Let me address your question directly.

[00:21:44] Speaker 03:
Why does it make sense?

[00:21:46] Speaker 02:
In those cases involved parties to the case or kind of interlopers?

[00:21:52] Speaker 03:
They're about interveners who were not permitted, not in the trade court context specifically, but they're about interveners who were not permitted to defend

[00:22:01] Speaker 03:
a judgment on an injunction on appeal where the government wasn't.

[00:22:05] Speaker 03:
Why does it make sense?

[00:22:06] Speaker 03:
Why would it be different in this context?

[00:22:08] Speaker 03:
The answer is I think it's important to remember that we are talking about an injunction affecting estimated duty deposits.

[00:22:13] Speaker 03:
The point of the estimate is to make a fair approximation of what the ultimate duties are going to be.

[00:22:21] Speaker 03:
We know what the ultimate duties are going to be.

[00:22:23] Speaker 03:
They're going to be zero.

[00:22:25] Speaker 03:
How do we know that?

[00:22:25] Speaker 03:
Because time has gone on.

[00:22:27] Speaker 03:
Commerce has continued to do its work.

[00:22:29] Speaker 03:
it's put out the preliminary results of the eighth review.

[00:22:32] Speaker 02:
But we didn't know that then, right?

[00:22:35] Speaker 03:
I'm sorry, when?

[00:22:36] Speaker 02:
We didn't know that then, at the time of, I forget when the notice of appeal was filed.

[00:22:41] Speaker 02:
But the 0% on remand was until April, right?

[00:22:44] Speaker 02:
And this injunction was mid-February.

[00:22:48] Speaker 02:
That's right.

[00:22:48] Speaker 03:
But of course, the mid-continent, as the party appealing, has to demonstrate standing at every stage of the case.

[00:22:54] Speaker 02:
You know, maybe that would... But in terms of judging the standing, we have to assume that mid-continent is correct on the merits.

[00:23:02] Speaker 02:
So I'm going to assume that 154 was the correct rate.

[00:23:07] Speaker 02:
Correct under the regime, right?

[00:23:09] Speaker 02:
Which is mostly about accuracy, but maybe not 100% about accuracy.

[00:23:15] Speaker 02:
I don't want to quibble, Your Honor, but I think, you know, it's... Which, I mean, I want to say, which is why you have a very strong case on the merits.

[00:23:24] Speaker 02:
But for standing, we have to assume that they're right on the merits.

[00:23:31] Speaker 03:
I'm happy to assume it for purposes of this inquiry.

[00:23:35] Speaker 03:
It's an estimate.

[00:23:36] Speaker 03:
We know now what the

[00:23:39] Speaker 03:
Actual rate it's commerce has told us and that by the way that determination Are you now putting the mootness just so I know or are you still in stand?

[00:23:46] Speaker 03:
No, your honor.

[00:23:47] Speaker 03:
I'm talking about standing Okay, the point is there are two different zeros, right?

[00:23:51] Speaker 02:
The zero is the later cash deposit and an administrative review.

[00:23:54] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:23:55] Speaker 02:
This zero is the the This administrative review on remit.

[00:24:00] Speaker 03:
Yes, that's exactly right But but the consequences of it being both is what I that both of those numbers are zero

[00:24:07] Speaker 03:
is what I think demonstrates that there's not going to be a estimate for something that the final has already been answered.

[00:24:16] Speaker 03:
That wouldn't make any sense.

[00:24:18] Speaker 03:
Now, this is sort of Midcontinent's belated attempt in this court to save its case from mootness.

[00:24:24] Speaker 03:
Now, to talk about that, Midcontinent's position to this court, actually its request for relief of expedited briefing from this court, was premised on its observation, correctly, that the case for the preliminary injunction was going to become moot

[00:24:37] Speaker 03:
when the next review came out.

[00:24:39] Speaker 03:
Then the next review came out, and all of a sudden Midcontinent said, we've changed our mind.

[00:24:43] Speaker 03:
We no longer believe that the case has moved.

[00:24:46] Speaker 03:
But they couldn't cite anything.

[00:24:48] Speaker 03:
And my friend couldn't stand up here and give you any citation for the proposition that the trade court would have the ability

[00:24:56] Speaker 03:
to enter a retroactive collection of estimated deposits, notwithstanding commerce's subsequent determinations.

[00:25:04] Speaker 03:
The law on this.

[00:25:05] Speaker 02:
So one of the things I think I said to Mr. Gordon is I was thinking about that, am thinking about that, in the category of standing cases where the fact that there are yet to be litigated issues that have to be litigated for the plaintiff or appellant here to

[00:25:25] Speaker 02:
end up getting relief doesn't mean that there is no standing to resolve a threshold issue so that

[00:25:33] Speaker 02:
If one thinks about this in that framework, the question of whether there could be a retroactive collection, duty to collect, is something to be litigated below.

[00:25:46] Speaker 02:
And as long as there is not zero chance that that will occur, then there might be some relief.

[00:25:53] Speaker 03:
I completely understand that point, Judge Toronto.

[00:25:55] Speaker 03:
And if I could just address it directly for a minute, I think that before the court

[00:26:00] Speaker 03:
exercises jurisdiction in the face of a, let's call it a presumptively moot case.

[00:26:06] Speaker 03:
One way to think about it is we've carried our prima facie burden to show that the preliminary injunction is moot.

[00:26:13] Speaker 03:
And then you're looking, is there anything that could save and that could preserve this court's Article III jurisdiction?

[00:26:19] Speaker 03:
My respectful submission would be, before you exercise that Article III jurisdiction, mid-continent has got to come up with something.

[00:26:26] Speaker 03:
They've got to offer you a case citation

[00:26:28] Speaker 03:
or a statute or a regulation or something that would lead you to believe that that remedy that is being hypothesized as the basis for the court continuing to decide the merits of the case actually has a basis in law.

[00:26:41] Speaker 03:
And I don't think it suffices respectfully to just say we'd like to go make an argument that no court has ever embraced so far as we can tell.

[00:26:49] Speaker 03:
and invent a new concept of estimated duty deposits.

[00:26:52] Speaker 03:
And it's on that slim possibility that relief could be entered for the first time ever in that category that this court is going to exercise jurisdiction.

[00:27:01] Speaker 03:
I want to spend just a couple moments, if I might, addressing the merits.

[00:27:06] Speaker 03:
Because I think that the trade court had really a trial in this case.

[00:27:11] Speaker 03:
It found that this was not a close case.

[00:27:14] Speaker 03:
It found that the government had committed multiple errors of law

[00:27:19] Speaker 03:
and that we've prevailed on four independently sufficient grounds.

[00:27:23] Speaker 03:
I do not think Mid-Continent has come close to showing that the Trade Corp abused human trafficking.

[00:27:28] Speaker 02:
The four grounds are, one is the statement in the preamble, a second is a

[00:27:34] Speaker 02:
practice of giving a first-time lawyer problem a pass.

[00:27:43] Speaker 02:
The third is this is just not even in the ballpark of accuracy under the adverse inference statutes.

[00:27:53] Speaker 03:
Which one am I missing?

[00:27:55] Speaker 03:
I think you gave one, two, and four, the third one.

[00:27:59] Speaker 03:
is that at the moment when commerce decides whether to apply an adverse inference at all, before we get to the final step, which was the actual adverse rate that they selected, the 154%, was that even in the ballpark?

[00:28:13] Speaker 03:
It clearly wasn't.

[00:28:14] Speaker 03:
But at the third step, commerce has to make a determination about the actual conduct, the problems that led here.

[00:28:22] Speaker 03:
And as this court said in Nip and Seal,

[00:28:24] Speaker 03:
You know, commerce needs to explain, reflect an awareness that mistakes sometimes occur.

[00:28:30] Speaker 03:
The statute does not demand perfection.

[00:28:33] Speaker 00:
What was the argument that commerce made below in defending this?

[00:28:38] Speaker 03:
I would urge the court to take a look at the trade court's opinion on this point, Your Honor, because I think what the trade court found, why it found that this was not a close case,

[00:28:47] Speaker 03:
is that commerce's analysis on that point was entirely conclusory.

[00:28:52] Speaker 03:
They don't give any explanation at all.

[00:28:54] Speaker 03:
They just say, we are going to apply an adverse inference, because we find they just sort of recite the statutory standard.

[00:29:01] Speaker 00:
Well, I'm saying, in the trade court on this, did commerce kind of put its tail between its legs, or did it really vigorously argue?

[00:29:08] Speaker 03:
So, Your Honor, respectfully, my

[00:29:11] Speaker 03:
Putting the tail between its legs is how I would put it, having sat through that trial.

[00:29:17] Speaker 03:
I think the government was, let's call it, sheepish in its defense of its actions here.

[00:29:22] Speaker 03:
And that's because the opinion, of course, that commerce put out on this point is really pretty bare bones.

[00:29:28] Speaker 03:
to say nothing of the final factor that I think Judge Taranto was mentioning, which is even if you get all the way to the end, and you conclude that, okay, we need to have some sanction here.

[00:29:38] Speaker 03:
We made a mistake.

[00:29:39] Speaker 03:
Owen Fastner's made a mistake.

[00:29:41] Speaker 03:
Commerce says, we're going to exercise our discretion to impose some kind of punishment.

[00:29:47] Speaker 03:
The rates that had been imposed on this company throughout had been like zero, zero, zero, 1.65.

[00:29:52] Speaker 03:
In the face of that record,

[00:29:56] Speaker 03:
to say they could have, and they knew actually based on the actual data that the right answer was zero.

[00:30:01] Speaker 03:
An appropriate exercise of discretion might have been to say instead of zero, which is the true rate, we're going to impose 1.65 or we're going to double 1.65 to sort of teach you a lesson.

[00:30:12] Speaker 03:
That's an agency exercising its discretion.

[00:30:15] Speaker 03:
Let me ask one question.

[00:30:17] Speaker 01:
I'm sympathetic.

[00:30:19] Speaker 01:
You missed the deadline by 16 minutes.

[00:30:23] Speaker 01:
It wasn't an access problem.

[00:30:24] Speaker 01:
It was user error.

[00:30:25] Speaker 01:
Why didn't you bring it to commerce's attention?

[00:30:28] Speaker 01:
Why did you wait five weeks?

[00:30:30] Speaker 01:
I'm one of these people that really thinks the best

[00:30:34] Speaker 01:
Our best offense is good defense.

[00:30:37] Speaker 01:
Why did you not?

[00:30:38] Speaker 01:
Mea culpa.

[00:30:39] Speaker 01:
Commerce absolutely had a policy in place of allowing extensions until the next day when people asked for them.

[00:30:45] Speaker 01:
So why did you sit back and pretend you weren't late and wait to get your hand caught in the cookie jar?

[00:30:52] Speaker 01:
Why didn't you just ask for the cookie?

[00:30:54] Speaker 03:
There's more, I think, two points about that.

[00:30:56] Speaker 03:
The first is that the policy that your honor referenced about if you call at 4.50 PM and we can't get you to get the automatic extension,

[00:31:04] Speaker 03:
The bar didn't know about that practice.

[00:31:06] Speaker 03:
I think this is discussed in the trade court's opinion.

[00:31:07] Speaker 03:
That was sort of unearthed in the Selig-Hallott case after the events here.

[00:31:12] Speaker 03:
So we know that now.

[00:31:13] Speaker 03:
And of course, that's what we would do today.

[00:31:15] Speaker 03:
And that explains up till 5 o'clock.

[00:31:18] Speaker 03:
What explains the next five weeks?

[00:31:19] Speaker 03:
Sure.

[00:31:20] Speaker 03:
So I think what explains it is it's important to remember what data we're talking about here.

[00:31:25] Speaker 03:
We had submitted all of the actual information that bears on Commerce's review.

[00:31:31] Speaker 03:
These were backup files.

[00:31:33] Speaker 03:
These were PDF versions, excuse me, these were Excel versions of PDFs that had already been submitted.

[00:31:39] Speaker 03:
It was just submitting the same data in a different form.

[00:31:42] Speaker 03:
So I think we thought at the time, okay,

[00:31:45] Speaker 03:
You've got everything you need, Commerce, to conduct your review.

[00:31:50] Speaker 03:
And even if you were going to ding us and say, anything that came in late, we're not going to look at, they still would have had all the facts and that they needed to do it.

[00:31:59] Speaker 03:
Now, again, obviously, if we could go back and do things over again, knowing what we know now, would we have called Commerce and said, look, we had a problem with access, and would we have called Commerce before?

[00:32:12] Speaker 03:
Of course we would.

[00:32:12] Speaker 03:
This was part of our remedial efforts

[00:32:14] Speaker 03:
to take advantage of commerce's first-time grace policy, which is what they require.

[00:32:18] Speaker 03:
They said, if you want the grace policy, you need to show.

[00:32:21] Speaker 03:
How are you going to prevent this from happening again?

[00:32:23] Speaker 03:
We have better training on that issue specifically, both calling before and after.

[00:32:27] Speaker 03:
But I would submit that if you look at the full record of what we did here, you do not see a company that is intentionally obfuscating commerce's proceeding, that's trying to frustrate it.

[00:32:37] Speaker 03:
We look nothing like Dong Tai Pete, where they knew about the problem 10 days in advance.

[00:32:42] Speaker 03:
This is a company that was diligently trying to comply with this investigation that encountered an unexpected filing problem.

[00:32:50] Speaker 01:
I'm just not buying that part.

[00:32:51] Speaker 01:
I mean, as lawyers often do, you waited till the very last minute to submit your filing, and it was user error.

[00:32:59] Speaker 01:
There was no problem with access.

[00:33:00] Speaker 01:
Access wasn't down.

[00:33:01] Speaker 01:
Access didn't go down.

[00:33:04] Speaker 01:
You didn't properly do it.

[00:33:07] Speaker 01:
You waited till the last minute.

[00:33:08] Speaker 01:
You didn't properly do it.

[00:33:10] Speaker 01:
But that isn't, to me, the problem.

[00:33:12] Speaker 01:
Because mistakes happen, and this is not a jurisdictional mistake.

[00:33:15] Speaker 01:
You didn't miss a statutory notice of appeal deadline.

[00:33:18] Speaker 01:
That's correct.

[00:33:19] Speaker 01:
But then you hid it.

[00:33:20] Speaker 01:
You buried your head in the sand.

[00:33:22] Speaker 01:
That's the part I don't understand.

[00:33:25] Speaker 03:
May I make two responses to that, Your Honor?

[00:33:28] Speaker 03:
The first is I respectfully, but I have to point out that the premise of Your Honor's question was that there was no problem with access.

[00:33:34] Speaker 03:
Respectfully, it's just not quite right.

[00:33:36] Speaker 03:
It's important to remember, we used the access check file feature.

[00:33:40] Speaker 03:
We were submitting these documents to get them to pre-clear with the system to find out, are we going to have any technical problems?

[00:33:46] Speaker 03:
The system came back and said, no.

[00:33:49] Speaker 03:
In the face of having run that check, I think it was reasonable to start the filing almost an hour before the deadline.

[00:33:55] Speaker 03:
It was the unexpected system's rejection of our filings when we first tried to upload them, especially in light of having pre-cleared them, that led us to run up to this deadline.

[00:34:05] Speaker 03:
I think that's the first thing.

[00:34:06] Speaker 03:
The second point is, just respectfully, this was not about trying to hope that we didn't get caught.

[00:34:12] Speaker 03:
We couldn't have imagined that commerce's response to a 16-minute delay of backup files would be to impose a draconian punishment.

[00:34:25] Speaker 01:
The fact that we didn't know how bad the penalty could be is not an answer.

[00:34:30] Speaker 01:
It does not prove that you tried to hide the ball on what you did wrong.

[00:34:34] Speaker 01:
That proves that had I known how bad the penalty would be, I would have come clean.

[00:34:38] Speaker 01:
It does not at all, from a logical standpoint, prove the concern I had, which is you're an officer of this court.

[00:34:46] Speaker 01:
You're an officer appearing before an agency.

[00:34:50] Speaker 01:
You've got an obligation to be up and up at all times and not try to slide something by hoping it doesn't get better.

[00:34:56] Speaker 03:
I completely understand that point, Your Honor.

[00:34:57] Speaker 03:
And I think the full record of Oman Fastener's participation in this proceeding

[00:35:02] Speaker 03:
reflects a diligent desire to participate, to be faithful, to carry out those duties, to provide commerce with everything it needs.

[00:35:10] Speaker 03:
We didn't have a motive to try to hide something here.

[00:35:13] Speaker 01:
No, you screwed up and didn't own it.

[00:35:16] Speaker 01:
And that, you need to walk out of this room and you need to own.

[00:35:19] Speaker 01:
And you need to not do it again.

[00:35:22] Speaker 03:
I completely understand.

[00:35:23] Speaker 01:
I am bombing you now if you're not getting it.

[00:35:25] Speaker 03:
I completely understand that, Your Honor.

[00:35:27] Speaker 03:
We understand that a mistake was made.

[00:35:31] Speaker 03:
We've put in place remedial measures to make sure that it never happens again.

[00:35:34] Speaker 01:
But it will happen again, because people are human.

[00:35:36] Speaker 01:
And you hope it doesn't happen in a jurisdictional situation.

[00:35:39] Speaker 01:
And when it does, I expect you and your firm to own it and ask for forgiveness, not try to hide it.

[00:35:45] Speaker 03:
That's obviously what will happen in any future instance where this occurs, Your Honor.

[00:35:50] Speaker 02:
I think, can I just ask you a very dull and almost certainly irrelevant factional point?

[00:35:58] Speaker 02:
Dad stepped in to save you from that.

[00:36:05] Speaker 02:
Was there action after the 5 o'clock time on your part, or was it you had done everything, you had pushed all the buttons, and it just took until 5 16 to get the confirmation that you needed for the process to come to its completion?

[00:36:26] Speaker 02:
Your Honor, in truth, I don't know.

[00:36:28] Speaker 02:
The wording was a little bit unclear to me.

[00:36:32] Speaker 03:
In truth, I don't think I know the answer to that question with certainty.

[00:36:37] Speaker 01:
You learned.

[00:36:39] Speaker 03:
I am fully content to be perfectly open and honest with this court about what I know and what I don't and what we did and what we didn't do.

[00:36:48] Speaker 03:
We're not here trying to say that we did everything perfect.

[00:36:51] Speaker 03:
Mistake was made, clearly.

[00:36:52] Speaker 03:
We understand that.

[00:36:53] Speaker 03:
We accept that.

[00:36:54] Speaker 02:
Well, I think what we're... I don't know the specific answer to whether we hit the same button... That's not a good phrasing.

[00:37:02] Speaker 02:
A mistake was made.

[00:37:03] Speaker 03:
We made a mistake.

[00:37:05] Speaker 03:
That's much better.

[00:37:06] Speaker 03:
We made a mistake.

[00:37:07] Speaker 03:
We made a mistake.

[00:37:07] Speaker 03:
There's no doubt about that.

[00:37:08] Speaker 03:
We made a mistake.

[00:37:09] Speaker 03:
The question is, I think, what is an appropriate response?

[00:37:13] Speaker 03:
What was a reasonable exercise?

[00:37:16] Speaker 01:
I think we got it.

[00:37:17] Speaker 01:
Thank you so much.

[00:37:27] Speaker 04:
I'll be brief and understand them over time.

[00:37:31] Speaker 04:
A couple of cleanup points.

[00:37:33] Speaker 04:
Contrary to what Mr. Houston said, the files that were filed late were not simply optional backup files.

[00:37:41] Speaker 04:
The last file that was filed, the latest of the filings, was their revised U.S.

[00:37:47] Speaker 04:
sales database, which actually is one of the two pieces that go to the heart of Commerce's dumping analysis.

[00:37:52] Speaker 04:
It contains all the data on the U.S.

[00:37:54] Speaker 04:
sales, which is the core of

[00:37:56] Speaker 04:
the dumping analysis.

[00:37:58] Speaker 04:
This Section C supplemental questionnaire response had multiple, multiple questions with multiple subparts reflecting a huge variety of flaws and deficiencies in their early reporting.

[00:38:10] Speaker 02:
The claim that... So I just want to be under... I think I'm a little confused.

[00:38:15] Speaker 02:
So I guess I thought what I was hearing was that Excel versions had already been submitted of all of the documents at issue

[00:38:27] Speaker 02:
What was being submitted at this 5 o'clock time were PDF versions, but the information, including the up-to-date, was already submitted properly to Commerce.

[00:38:39] Speaker 02:
Is that wrong?

[00:38:40] Speaker 04:
That is wrong.

[00:38:40] Speaker 04:
Among the things that were filed, as I said, was their revised US sales database.

[00:38:45] Speaker 04:
That is the heart of the dumping data that Commerce has to use.

[00:38:50] Speaker 04:
So it is not correct to claim this is merely optional.

[00:38:54] Speaker 02:
I'm just trying to understand whether the up-to-date information had already been put into commerce's hands and what was being submitted now.

[00:39:09] Speaker 02:
was a particular format of the information.

[00:39:12] Speaker 02:
Absolutely required, but nevertheless, just the different format.

[00:39:15] Speaker 04:
No?

[00:39:15] Speaker 04:
No.

[00:39:16] Speaker 02:
No, Your Honor.

[00:39:16] Speaker 04:
Because the database that goes in is in a format with SAS programming.

[00:39:22] Speaker 04:
And it's not something you can submit, for example, in a printed form and then use.

[00:39:27] Speaker 04:
It's only in that SAS format that's then brought into the computer program.

[00:39:31] Speaker 04:
Is the company SAS?

[00:39:32] Speaker 02:
SAS, yes, sir.

[00:39:33] Speaker 04:
OK, got it.

[00:39:35] Speaker 04:
The other point I would actually want to make here

[00:39:38] Speaker 04:
is that with respect to the commerce's, the pre-ambulatory language about giving an automatic extension until eight through the next day, if you get a timely extension request in and commerce doesn't have an opportunity to respond.

[00:39:52] Speaker 04:
Firstly, that has to do with timely extension requests, not untimely requests, which are subject to the requirement of showing an extraordinary circumstance.

[00:40:00] Speaker 04:
And the other part is it was not buried.

[00:40:02] Speaker 04:
It was published in the Federal Register in 2013.

[00:40:05] Speaker 04:
And as we cited in our reply brief, there's very good, very obvious, well-known case law that says that puts everyone on notice.

[00:40:13] Speaker 04:
In fact, what I'm hearing opposing counsel say is we didn't know about it.

[00:40:19] Speaker 04:
Whose fault is that?

[00:40:21] Speaker 04:
They need to be aware of commerce's practices.

[00:40:25] Speaker 04:
and things published in the Federal Register.

[00:40:27] Speaker 04:
This is consistent with the entire issue here of them now trying to blame the Commerce Department for problems that are entirely of their own creation.

[00:40:36] Speaker 04:
And as Judge Moore, you discussed the fact that they chose to hide this.

[00:40:42] Speaker 04:
So Commerce was entirely well within its authority to take the adverse measures it took.

[00:40:49] Speaker 04:
Let me also add one point about the rate

[00:40:51] Speaker 01:
how much does this authority to do something there's no doubt yet but the hundred fifty four percent is like you know my kids fifteen minutes late for curfew and so i chopped his leg off i mean that doesn't feel like the appropriate motherly response not that commerce has to be a mother in this situation but and i'm fifty four percent when they were zero or one percent or whatever it is

[00:41:13] Speaker 01:
That's a wow factor.

[00:41:16] Speaker 04:
But commerce didn't have any real options there.

[00:41:19] Speaker 04:
Because the record showed rates of, the original investigation rate was around 9%, which was then revised to around 4%.

[00:41:25] Speaker 04:
Then they had rates of 0s or 1.65.

[00:41:29] Speaker 04:
Commerce chose to assign a rate that was sufficiently adverse to induce future cooperation.

[00:41:35] Speaker 04:
on this record, that 154% rate.

[00:41:38] Speaker 01:
No, you can't say don't do future cooperation because they cooperated.

[00:41:41] Speaker 01:
They were just 15 minutes late and they tried to do it now or in advance.

[00:41:46] Speaker 01:
I mean, they screwed up, no doubt about it.

[00:41:49] Speaker 01:
But they did try and they did cooperate.

[00:41:51] Speaker 01:
They just didn't cooperate timely.

[00:41:53] Speaker 01:
So you can't say it was necessary.

[00:41:55] Speaker 01:
This isn't one of those parties that was trying to hide their data, which we see

[00:42:01] Speaker 01:
which is why commerce ends up pivoting and going to adverse inferences a lot.

[00:42:04] Speaker 01:
This is a company that fully attempted to disclose everything.

[00:42:07] Speaker 01:
They just got on the ball too late and didn't do it the exactly right way.

[00:42:12] Speaker 04:
And then I think an important part of it is the next piece, which is, as you asked, why did they try to hide it for five weeks?

[00:42:19] Speaker 04:
uh... you know as it for for commerce to suddenly realize uh... you know this was this was you know late-filed the knowing that no one engaged in self-help to come to us and say uh... we screwed up you know we can you can you under your regulations you know extend the deadline or allow us an opportunity to to submit now that hundred and fifty four percent margin is important to know does reasonably reflect among fasteners own experience why because when it was corroborated it was corroborated in the first administrative review to use as an adverse rate it was corroborated by specific

[00:42:50] Speaker 04:
reference to Oman Fastener's own sales experience.

[00:42:54] Speaker 04:
Now, if you look at the issues in decision memorandum from that, where that was discussed, it's apparent that that wasn't necessarily the highest rate within their database.

[00:43:02] Speaker 04:
Because as you know, the dumping database includes margins for individual transactions.

[00:43:07] Speaker 04:
Some can be quite low, even negative, for example.

[00:43:10] Speaker 04:
Some can be quite high.

[00:43:11] Speaker 04:
Commerce found that the 154% rate was reasonably reflective of Oman Fastener's pricing behavior in that first review.

[00:43:19] Speaker 01:
I just want to ask opposing counsel one question.

[00:43:22] Speaker 01:
I know we're out of time, but I'd like to have you answer the same thing, which is if we were in this case to ultimately affirm the injunction, does that resolve the now staid appeal?

[00:43:44] Speaker 04:
I would say

[00:43:46] Speaker 04:
It depends on the basis of the firmance, because the state appeal is concerned with the trial court's decision on the merits.

[00:43:54] Speaker 04:
And that's just one portion of the injunction.

[00:43:57] Speaker 04:
And we would hopefully be able to continue to litigate that, because we do believe that decision is deeply flawed.

[00:44:04] Speaker 02:
So you have arguments against the final

[00:44:07] Speaker 02:
decision, the CIT's affirmance of the April, whatever year, 2023, right?

[00:44:14] Speaker 02:
Is that what it was?

[00:44:15] Speaker 02:
Remand decision that are, in addition to your argument, that it really should have been 154 originally, and it was incorrect to have upset that.

[00:44:27] Speaker 04:
Well, the arguments would be largely the same, I think.

[00:44:31] Speaker 04:
As I said, it depends on the basis.

[00:44:34] Speaker 04:
If the court were to affirm, it would depend on the basis

[00:44:36] Speaker 04:
you know, for the firmness in what it says about the merits.

[00:44:41] Speaker 01:
Okay.

[00:44:41] Speaker 01:
I thank all counsel.

[00:44:42] Speaker 01:
This case is taken under submission.