Court Opinion

ID: 9479462
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:19:23.881045+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:03.715218
License: Public Domain

FRIEDMAN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I join the court’s opinion and write separately to make an additional point.
The language of 19 U.S.C. § 1504 supports, if it does not compel, the court’s holding that these entries were not “deemed liquidated” 90 days after the injunctions against their liquidation were dissolved. In that section Congress simply did not address the issue this case involves.
In terms of the overall statutory scheme, however, the appellants’ argument has considerable appeal. Section 1504 appears to be a comprehensive congressional attempt to deal with liquidation. There seems to be no valid reason why, if the suspension of the liquidation is terminated more than four years after entry of merchandise and Customs fails to liquidate within 90 days after the suspension has terminated, the entry should not be deemed liquidated as of the date of entry of the merchandise.
This is the general procedure that section 1504(a)(1) provides in cases where Customs fails to liquidate within the specified statutory period. The statute gives Customs generally one year from the time of entry to liquidate; permits the Secretary to extend the time of liquidation for any of the three circumstances specified in subsection (b), one of which is a suspension of liquidation required by statute or court order; and provides that except for such statutory or judicial suspension, the entry shall be deemed liquidated as of the date of entry if the liquidation has not been made within four years of entry. The statute, however, does not state what happens if the suspension is terminated (1) more than one, but less than four, years after entry, or (2) as in the present case, after the four-year period has expired.
One would think that in the latter situation Congress would have intended to make applicable the same procedure it used elsewhere in the statute that, if Customs failed to liquidate within the stated period of 90 days, the entries would be deemed liquidated as of the date of entry. But Congress did not so provide. It stated only *569that the entry “shall be liquidated” within the 90 days and did not specify (as it did elsewhere in the statute) what the consequence of failure so to liquidate would be.
The appellants ask us to rewrite the statute to supply the details that Congress omitted, i.e., to specify the consequence of nonliquidation. The court properly declines to take that action. Our function is to construe and apply the statute as written, not to rewrite the statute to achieve what may appear to be a fair or desirable result. To the extent the court’s decision produces any anomalous or inconsistent results, that is the consequence of the inartful and confusing way this statutory provision has been written.