Court Opinion

ID: 9490001
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:29:58.759676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:50.451621
License: Public Domain

MAYER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Because the Court of International Trade correctly concluded that Samsung Electronics America, Inc. (“Samsung”) received the quality of goods it ordered, I would affirm.
Samsung purchased and imported televisions, stereos, video cassette recorders, microwave ovens, de-humidifiers, and other electronic articles from Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (“manufacturer”) in Korea. Both parties entered into annual Servicing Agent Agreements requiring the manufacturer to reimburse Samsung on a monthly basis for the cost of Samsung’s inspection, repair, refurbishing and other customer-related services. This reimbursement was limited to five percent of the total value of the imported products over the course of each year.
Pursuant to 19 U.S.C. § 1401a(b), the Customs Service appraised the imported merchandise on the basis of the transaction value, using the price Samsung actually paid the manufacturer for the merchandise. Samsung paid the assessed duties and sold the merchandise along with limited warranties to its customers. Some of the merchandise was returned as defective under the warranties. The manufacturer reimbursed Samsung for *381losses and repair costs associated with these warranty returns.
Samsung sought a reduction in Customs’ appraisal of, and a concomitant refund for, the amount of duties it paid for the defective merchandise. Customs refused to adjust the duties. The Court of International Trade affirmed Customs’ refusal, finding that Samsung received the quality of goods it ordered under its contract with the manufacturer. Samsung Electronics America, Inc. v. United States, 904 F.Supp. 1403 (C.I.T.1995). As it did below, Samsung argues on appeal that it bargained for first quality defect-free merchandise. It believes that under 19 C.F.R. § 158.12, the existence of latent defects requires Customs to reduce the appraised dutiable value of the merchandise and refund the difference.
Because contract interpretation is a question of law, we must determine de novo whether the contract between Samsung and its manufacturer anticipated the delivery of wholly defect-free merchandise or the delivery of some defect-free merchandise as well as some that may be defective. Hughes Communications Galaxy, Inc. v. United States, 998 F.2d 953, 957 (Fed.Cir.1993). We look to the plain language of the contract and interpret it in a manner that gives meaning to all of its provisions and makes sense. McAbee Constr. Inc. v. United States, 97 F.3d 1431, 1435 (Fed.Cir.1996).
In support of its argument that the contract called for first quality defect-free merchandise, Samsung points only to the affidavit of Thomas Tesi, its General Manager of National Distribution. This affidavit states in relevant part:
The entered value of the merchandise was the price paid or payable for first quality, defect-free merchandise.
That price paid or payable did not contain any deduction or allowance for latent defects in the merchandise.
[The manufacturer] guaranteed to [Samsung] that the subject merchandise would be of first quality and defect-free as ordered. This guaranty was set forth in a contract between [the manufacturer] and Samsung known as a ‘Service Agreement’_ The Service Agreements set forth quality standards for the merchandise and provided for their enforcement by obligating [the manufacturer] to reimburse [Samsung] for any losses or costs of repair that [Samsung] incurred as a result of defects in the merchandise.
Such merchandise was not worth the price that [Samsung] had paid to [the manufacturer] for it.
Tesi’s self-serving assertions add nothing to our understanding of the contract or to the parties’ contemporaneous intentions. Without some explanation about how or why the cost of defective goods was imposed on one party and not the other, Tesi’s statements cannot favor one party’s interpretation over the other’s. Nor do his statements serve as evidence of Samsung’s intentions, absent some contemporaneous explanation as to why Samsung thought it would receive defect-free goods when standard industry practices inevitably resulted in delivery of some defective merchandise.
In contrast to these unhelpful statements, the following clauses in the Servicing Agency Agreements illustrate that the parties anticipated the delivery of both defect-free and some defective merchandise.
Whereas the Products exported to the United States are occasionally in need of the inspection, repair, refurbishing, and such other customer requested services. ...
For the Services rendered [by Samsung] hereunder, [the manufacturer] shall pay [Samsung] on monthly basis a service charge the amount of which shall not exceed five percent (5%) of the total amount of the Products exported to the United States in a relevant year....
In fact, and as confirmed by Samsung, Samsung received first class merchandise that was defect-free, as well as defective merchandise amounting to four-point-seven percent (4.7%) of the total amount of the products; almost exactly what it had anticipated. On these facts, it is difficult to imagine how Samsung can now claim that it ordered or anticipated completely defect-free merchandise or that it paid duties based on the receipt of defect-free merchandise. Both *382commercial reality and the specifics of these transactions show that Samsung knew exactly what it ordered and that it anticipated what it received. In contrast, this court denies these facts by relying on the ex post facto self-serving statements of a party about what it would like to have received in a perfect world and by creating a false choice between two possibilities: ordering defect-free merchandise or ordering defective merchandise. Neither possibility accurately describes the contract between Samsung and its manufacturer. Samsung did not order defective merchandise, but it did order merchandise knowing some of it would contain latent defects.