Rhone Poulenc, Inc. v. United States

Rhone Poulenc, Inc. (Rhone) (plaintiff) brought an action against the United States (defendant) before the United States Court of International Trade relating to whether synthetic silica was a duty-free item under the law. Because there were 12 other lawsuits involving similar factual or legal questions, including at least one other lawsuit by Rhone, one of Rhone’s lawsuits was selected as a test case while the other 12 were placed on the court’s suspension calendar. Once the test case was decided, the clerk of the court set a date by which parties to the cases on the suspension calendar would have to file motions to place their cases on the main calendar, or else the cases would be dismissed. The court clerk gave the parties eight months, rather than the 18 months permitted by the court’s rules, to file these motions. When Rhone failed to file a motion by the specified date, the clerk dismissed Rhone’s cases on the suspension calendar. Rhone filed a motion under Rule 60(b)(1) of the Court of International Trade, the court’s counterpart to Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, asking the court to vacate the dismissal order and reinstate its cases to the suspension calendar. The United States opposed the order, arguing, among other things, that Rule 60(b)(1) did not apply to the court because the court did not have equitable powers. Rhone argued that while the court’s predecessor, the customs court, lacked equitable powers, Congress granted the United States Court of International Trade equitable powers. The court applied binding caselaw in United States v. Torch, which held that the court could only review a dismissal under 28 U.S.C.§ 2646, which has a 30-day statute of limitation. The court agreed with the United States, and Rhone appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.