Court Opinion

ID: 9454981
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:05:46.525511+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:24.400740
License: Public Domain

NEESE, Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part):
Multiple uses of the imported articles here at issue were shown by the proof. It was, therefore, incumbent upon the appellee to have established by the evidence that the chief use of each machine was that contemplated by the classification asserted. United States v. C. S. Emery & Co., 53 CCPA 1, 8 [2], C.A.D. 868 (1966).
The Customs Court apparently reasoned that, as the chief use of the wood chipper machines is for making cellulosic pulp and the chipscreen machines are used only with the woodchippers, the chief use of the chipscreen machines is also for making cellulosic pulp. This may be true, but there is not sufficient substantial evidence in the record before us to have proved it.
Our function is, not to classify the machines at issue, but to review the evidence supporting the classification. Stripped of the conclusionary evidence in the record that under “most conditions” a chipscreen is essential to the manufacture of pulp chip, I find nowhere in the record any evidence from which the court below could have found, directly or by reasonable inference, that the chief use of the chipsereens, parts *789for which are here at issue, is for making eellulosie pulp. There is no evidence as to what happens to woodchips upon screening which are too large for use in making pulp chip, as to how much of the screened wood chips is required by paper manufacturers to be screened, as to what conditions must exist before a chipscreen is essential to the manufacture of pulp chip, or as to what proportion the production of industrial pulp bears to the paper manufacturing industry as a whole.
If this trial had been to a jury burdened with the responsibility to draw a conclusion of fact as to the chief use of these chipscreen machines, there is not enough evidence in the record to have justified a refusal to direct a verdict for the appellant on this issue. National Labor Relations Board v. Columbian E. & S. Co., 306 U.S. 292, 300, 59 S.Ct. 501, 83 L.Ed. 660, 665 (1939), citing Consolidated Edison Co. of New York v. National Labor Relations Board, 305 U.S. 197, 229, 59 S.Ct. 206, 217 [19], 83 L.Ed. 126, 140 (1939). Thus, the judgment of the Customs Court should have been reversed as to the parts for the chipscreen machines.
I concur with the majority insofar as the judgment of the Customs Court is affirmed with regard to the classification of the woodchippers and parts thereof.