Butti v. United States

49 C.C.P.A. 1, 1961 CCPA LEXIS 193
CourtCourt of Customs and Patent Appeals
DecidedJuly 14, 1961
DocketNo. 5041
StatusPublished

This text of 49 C.C.P.A. 1 (Butti v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Customs and Patent Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Butti v. United States, 49 C.C.P.A. 1, 1961 CCPA LEXIS 193 (ccpa 1961).

Opinion

Rich, Judge,

delivered the opinion of the court:

gment of the Second Division, Appellate Term, A.R.D. 119, affirming the judgment of [2]*2the trial court, Eeap. Dec. 9416, which held that the importer had failed to overcome the presumption of correctness attaching to the values found by the appraiser and that the statutory values are the appraised values.

The importations are accordions, imported from Italy and entered at various unit prices. They were appraised on the basis of export value for similar merchandise, section 402(d), Tariff Act of 1930. The importer contends that the accordions should be appraised at the entered value on the basis of foreign value, Section 402(c), or export value, Section 402(d), for such merchandise.

At the initial trial before the single judge, the importer primarily relied upon an affidavit executed by the exporter, Antonio Butti, to establish a statutory value for such merchandise,2 additionally relying on the oral testimony of a single witness who inspected the importations to show that the accordions in issue were used and shopworn. One other affidavit of record shows that such merchandise had been sold to at least one purchaser in Italy during a 6 months period a year prior to the importations at bar. Numerous exhibits were offered by the Government to establish an “unusual course of business” by the Italian exporter, Antonio Butti, and his son Dominick Butti, the American importer.

The trial judge found (Eeap. Dec. 8480) that the Government’s evidence established that the exporter confined his sales for export to [3]*3the United States to the importer herein and that such a course of conduct was “an absolute bar for finding plaintiff’s entered values as the export values.” As to foreign value, the single judge was of the opinion that the exporter’s affidavit merely recited ultimate facts, opinions and conclusions, failing to establish “evidentiary facts” upon which a finding of foreign value could be based. During the trial, the Government had moved to dismiss on the ground that “he [the importer] has failed to make out a prima facie case; * * Decision on that motion having been reserved, the judge, in his opinion, denied it, apparently because he was of the opinion that he could not, merely by dismissing, find a value as the statute (28 U.S.C. 2631) required.

Review was sought and it is the opinion of the Second Division, Appellate Term, A.R.D. 73, and the judgment entered thereon that give rise to the questions now before us. The Second Division found that the trial judge erred in admitting the Government’s exhibits over the importer’s objection that they were irrelevant and in his reliance on those exhibits to establish that the exporter “sold exclusively” to his son, the United States importer. It also was of the opinion that, with respect to the exporter’s affidavit, the trial judge erred in failing to give weight to the “uncontradicted” statements made therein. In so reversing the trial judge, the Second Division said:

An examination of the exhibits offered by the * * * [Government] in the nature of unautJienticated and unconnected so-called correspondence discloses nothing which could be construed as sufficient to establish that the Italian exporter sold and/or offered for sale shopworn and damaged accordions, such [as] and/or similar to those here involved, to the appellant herein exclusively. [Emphasis ours.]

The Second Division also said that Exhibit 1, the Antonio Butti affidavit, “makes a prima facie case in favor of appellant” and that the trial judge “discarded the only legal evidence, collective exhibit 1, as to value.” The case was remanded for “further consideration upon the record before it” so that “this case may be reconsidered by the trial court, in light of the observations herein made.”

The Government moved for rehearing which was denied.

On remand, the single judge ordered the case restored to the calendar for clarification of the record (Reap. Dec. 9015), apparently to authenticate the Government’s exhibits since he was unable to determine whether the Second Division, by the language in its opinion, considered those exhibits irrelevant or merely “unauthenticated and unconnected.” The exhibits were thereupon authenticated by the importer to the trial court judge’s satisfaction and he redecided the case and rendered his decision as to value (Reap. Dec. 9416), again relying on the Government’s exhibits to show that the merchandise was not freely offered for sale and concluded that the plaintiff “has [4]*4failed to establish the claimed values as the proper values.” Appeal was again taken to the Second Division. Again that court found the Government’s exhibits inadmissible and in addition found that the trial court erred in restoring the case to the calendar (A.R.D. 119). The Second Division, relying on United States v. Elliott, Greene & Co., et al., 28 CCPA 177, C.A.D. 141, also held that their first ruling on admissibility, whether or not that ruling was correct, had “become final and conclusive upon the parties, in the absence of an appeal timely taken” and could not be reconsidered. Whether the senior Butti’s affidavit, importer’s Exhibit 1, in itself established a prima facie case, as it had said in the previous opinion, was not specifically passed upon. Instead, the court chose to destroy its value by relying on prior inconsistent statements by the exporter3 and found the conflict sufficient to “seriously impair” the credibility of the affiant so that Exhibit 1 was “entitled to little, if any weight,” thereby finding the record insufficient to establish the importer’s claim. The decision of the trial court was therefore affirmed.

Neither the admissibility of the Government’s exhibits nor the propriety of restoring the case to the calendar by the trial judge has been presented here. The importer contends, however, that the Second Division was, by virtue of its previous finding, without “jurisdiction” to reconsider whether Exhibit 1 constitutes a prima facie case in favor of the importer. This is so, he says in his assignment of errors, because the previous finding “had become, under United States v. Elliott, Greene & Co., 28 C.C.P.A. (Customs) 177, C.A.D. 141, the settled law of the case.” Importer also argues that the Second Division disregarded what it had previously found to be the “only legal evidence of value in the case.” Additionally, the importer contends that it was error for the Second Division to have relied on statements made in the consular invoices to impeach the credibility of the affiant, (he senior Butti, as those invoices had not been offered and admitted in evidence.

In support of the proposition that the Second Division was bound by its own prior holding that the importer had made out a prima facie case, appellant relies primarily on the Elliott, Greene case, supra, a reappraisement case. There, in a first appeal, certain Government exhibits had been excluded from the record on the ground that they had never been certified in accordance with section 501 of the Tariff Act of 1930. The case was remanded to the single judge for the purpose “of deciding the same on the record as made with the two reports excluded.” On remand, the Government had moved that the [5]

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49 C.C.P.A. 1, 1961 CCPA LEXIS 193, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/butti-v-united-states-ccpa-1961.