Court Opinion

ID: 8848589
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 17:05:53.106516+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:25.245760
License: Public Domain

LACOMBE, Circuit Judge.
I am not satisfied that the examination given was sufficient to answer the requirements of the statute. It should be such as to determine whether the tobacco has or has not the distinctive features which place it in one or other of the paragraphs imposing duty. About one-sixtieth of each bale was examined, with this result:

There appear here too great variances, even in the tobacco from the same plantation, to warrant the assumption that the other 59-GO of the examined bale, as well as the contents of the unexamined bales, contain tobacco of both grades in the proportions found to exist in the trifling amount examined. It will not do to say that the examination was such as a merchant makes when buying tobacco, because the merchant in that case is looking only for such distinguishing characteristics as are known to trade. The statute has prescribed a duty test for tobacco wholly unknown to trade, and, to determine whether imported tobacco possesses the noncommercial characteristics which subject it to a higher duty, the examination should be full enough to insure accuracy, which this examination seems to have failed to do.
Decision of the appraisers reversed. All should be reliquidated at 35 cents, as the government has not by competent proof shown that any single bale of it was 75-cent tobacco.