Koru North America v. United States
United States Court of International Trade
701 F. Supp. 229 (1988)

- Written by Josh Lee, JD
Facts
Koru North America (plaintiff) exported frozen Hoki fillets to the United States. The fillets were made from fish caught off the coast of New Zealand in an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) by ships flying the flags of New Zealand, Japan, and the Soviet Union. After the fish were caught, preliminary preparation was completed on the ship and eventually offloaded in New Zealand. The New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries inspected the fish and certified them as being of New Zealand origin. The fish were then frozen and shipped to Korea for further processing, where they were thawed, skinned, boned, trimmed, glazed, refrozen, and packaged for exportation into the United States. When the fish arrived in Korea, they had the look of whole fish without heads and were called headed and gutted Hoki. After the processing in Korea, the fish had been trimmed and cut into fillets, no longer possessed the essential shape of a fish, and were known as fillets. Koru then marked the fillets as products of New Zealand and exported the fillets to the United States. Upon arrival, United States Customs (defendant) inspected the products and denied entry for being improperly marked with the country of origin. Customs determined that the proper country of origin was the Soviet Union. Koru filed a lawsuit in the United States Court of International Trade and challenged the decision.
Rule of Law
Issue
Holding and Reasoning (Tsoucalas, J.)
What to do next…
Here's why 814,000 law students have relied on our case briefs:
- Written by law professors and practitioners, not other law students. 46,300 briefs, keyed to 988 casebooks. Top-notch customer support.
- The right amount of information, includes the facts, issues, rule of law, holding and reasoning, and any concurrences and dissents.
- Access in your classes, works on your mobile and tablet. Massive library of related video lessons and high quality multiple-choice questions.
- Easy to use, uniform format for every case brief. Written in plain English, not in legalese. Our briefs summarize and simplify; they don’t just repeat the court’s language.