one four seven nine united states versus ford motor company you're representing the government here and you just want to confirm you've reserved five minutes for a final crisis all right we can begin whenever you're ready i'm january thirteenth two thousand and three mery thing else the to entertain it they were for two years now we had a long history a one year waivers which you accepted i guess in your discretionary authority misconstrued by the workers implying an obligation my customers do something under common law waivers unilaterally so there is no replication there's an obligation to customers to do something but when you're regulation in effect says  he had a little section where he addressed your claim for the duties five point two million approximately in duties and he said well it's moot in light of my ruling on the statute of limitations in any event  it would be improper because these are not lawful duties and i think do you understand him to be saying that the section they were lawful duties because of the ruling in the previous fifteen ninety two d s in yes come back to get these duties because they were not the correct duties and you were deprived of them just five procedural errors that's right that's your we took too long after reading to the right you're saying that if if you had time to be liquidated and then found out it was the wrong duty you could come back under fifty ninety two d to get it and you to say well there are a lot of findings in the ford litigation previously both i guess our decision and the decision of the of the of the court of international trade proceed at that church carmen's lake the opinion that the that followed the trial where he made a number of factual findings and in fact it seems that a lot of those findings were the subject of a stipulation by the parties as to what happened and judge carmen pick those up in his opinion and then we we picked them up in our opinion specifically and i'm thinking about the disclosure it does seem to be undisputed that there was a disclosure made in five sometime i guess it was in early well i'm thinking more of the just the fact that that that the the ford came in and said look we made an error here that communicate it seems that it was stipulated that that communication that there was there was a communication but it most in your view of partial disclosure i said was made in the state you're saying you would say yes they said we made a mistake but they didn't go on to explain the plus about a minute and a half but you had a number of questions on this live from the panel from all three members of the panel so we'll give you your full we'll give you your full five minutes of  so we'll hear from four mr cooper let me ask you if i could sorry for jumping in before you've said a word here but just so i don't forget one point that is important for me if we could start at the back in  sense mr i asked mr levitt a question about the duties ok and he said look the reason we can come back and seek the five point two million in duties is the following number one if we had liquidated timely and then saw there was an error we could come back we should not be barred from coming back to the duties simply because we were on time the extent or we didn't support the extensions it was a deem liquidation what is your answer to that contention again i'm sorry for just pouncing on you but i wanted to just answer that question in my mind then you can go it however you want to go on your arguments first in the morning i'm sorry i didn't i didn't i didn't give you a chance to see it was so intent of my question i didn't give you a chance to exchange the usual pleasantries with the court but anyway go ahead i don't findings per the government's stipulation and this court accepted those findings that number one for her and the findings were all right here from december thirty complaint alleged exactly what the district the trial were found and they say nothing nothing in this entire place mentions the inventory control that wasn't an element of the violations and what this fifteen i ne circumstances of the violation and subsection four disclose the circumstances there is a prior disclosure here it eliminates the penalty of this negligence or gross negligence it limits it to one hundred negligence when any of the items that were brought in whether it was a failure the inventory control system or otherwise it would be sufficient so the prior disclosure would not be able to cut off previous offer to waive the statute of limitations the very next line says for here by offers to waive the period of limitations she does quote the beginning point is simply that the record is simply couldn't be clearer that forward pursuant to long standing course of the judge or have specific published policies offered to wait and had provided an offer that to be valid had to be accepted and had to be accepted by operation again your orders of customs all published posts to be seventy six thirty three three years old now began this policy it's a page eight four zero zero zero six eight and it's specifically exercised sparingly by customs it will consider these offers but it will only sparingly actually accept them when the most telling lines is is the last had to be accepted in order to be valid and that in fact this offer was not accepted i am not going to but i am going forward very briefly from t v nine eleven  customs clear policies and the course of dealing in this case and with other borders it's quite clear that customs insisted that an offer to waive be submitted that it kept control of whether or not the statute of limitations would be where not that the importer had unilateral control and in that it would decide whether or not the pressures that tend to  to do more then to polish our plank and to to better prepare ourselves to file a suit against you but what it would it would clearly be you are not for this contemplated by customs a six year statute of limitations agreement which both parties are actually trying out a congressional statute extending the statute of limitations a year beyond their reply with ourselves up to the possibility that our defense defenses may be prejudiced by a fraction of the additional time that  to be a waiver they had to accept only offers a request for acceptance of waivers with the c and they were staring they accept that we couldn't direction by filing the lawsuit within wait three four refers to what it did is ask say this waiver is made knowingly and not there or you can look at all sides of the issue can the argument here and then the customs want to assert a public notice that that is ineffectual unless certain words were used in response to the waiver there'd be no reason to do that is that our position is that the case