Court Opinion

ID: 9453751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:22:57.062999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:47.438578
License: Public Domain

RICH, Judge
(dissenting).
While it makes sense for an appellate court not to interfere with the discre*1017tionary dismissal of cases by a trial court for lack of prosecution, the majority opinion seems to violate that very principle and to suffer from a confusion of identity. We are the appellate court and we are meddling in the discretionary procedural affairs of the Customs Court, which is a trial court. Three of its judges — all trial judges, which we are not — were of the opinion, construing their own rules, that their colleague, Judge Wilson (and finally Senior Judge Wilson), should not have dismissed the action. The Appellate Term * of the Customs Court is not an appellate court, it is the same court; and in this case it was attending to its own housekeeping. With respect to the cited case, Sweeney v. Anderson, the Customs Court judges were here exercising “supervision over their own dockets” and we should not interfere in their collective discretionary judgment on how to run a trial court. I would affirm.

 This is the correct designation, not “Appellate Division.” See the Government’s brief, pages 2, 3, 7, and 12. See also Clayton Chemical & Packaging Co. v. United States, 383 U.S. 821, 822, 86 S.Ct. 1128, 16 L.Ed.2d 288.