[Federal Register Volume 65, Number 232 (Friday, December 1, 2000)]
[Notices]
[Pages 75301-75302]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 00-30671]


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INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION


Sanction for Breaches of Commission Protective Order

AGENCY: International Trade Commission.

ACTION: Sanction for breaches of Commission protective order.

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SUMMARY: Notice is hereby given of the sanction imposed by the 
Commission for breaches of the administrative protective order 
(``APO'') issued in Crawfish Tail Meat From China, Inv. No. 731-TA-752 
(Final). The Commission found that Steven B. Lehat, Esq., and Surjit P. 
Soni, Esq., breached the APO by (1) delegating primary responsibility 
for APO compliance to a junior attorney and then failing to provide 
appropriate supervision of that attorney, which resulted in two APO 
breaches, (2) repeatedly failing to remedy obvious flaws in their 
firm's procedures for protecting business proprietary information 
(``BPI'') released to the firm under APO, and (3) failing to certify to 
the return or destruction of the BPI obtained under the APO. As a 
sanction, the Commission is issuing this public reprimand and barring 
them from access to BPI for a period of six months

[[Page 75302]]

from the date of publication of this notice.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Carol McCue Verratti, Esq., Office of 
the General Counsel, U.S. International Trade Commission, 500 E Street, 
SW., Washington, DC 20436, telephone 202-205-3088. Hearing impaired 
individuals are advised that information on this matter can be obtained 
by contacting the Commission's TDD terminal at 202-205-1810. General 
information concerning the Commission can also be obtained by accessing 
its Internet server (http://www.usitc.gov).

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: In connection with the Crawfish 
investigation, Messrs. Lehat, Soni, and several other attorneys filed 
applications for APOs with the Commission. In the applications, they 
swore (i) not to disclose without written permission any of the 
information obtained under the APO except to certain enumerated 
categories of approved persons, (ii) to serve all materials containing 
BPI disclosed under the APO as directed by the Secretary, and (iii) to 
otherwise comply with the terms of the APO and the Commission's 
regulations regarding access to BPI. They also acknowledged in the APO 
that violation of the APO may subject them, and their firm, to 
debarment from practice before the Commission, referral to the U.S. 
Attorney or appropriate professional association, or ``such other 
administrative sanctions determined to be appropriate * * * .'' The 
Commission granted their applications.
    The firm had little experience with practice before the Commission. 
Early in the investigation, one of the firm's attorneys breached the 
APO by releasing BPI obtained from the Commission to the Commerce 
Department. Commerce personnel were not authorized to have access to 
such materials under the Commission APO. As a result, the firm decided 
to place Mr. Soni and Mr. Lehat in charge of the investigation. They 
delegated primary responsibility for APO compliance to a junior 
attorney. Mr. Soni and Mr. Lehat each deny that they had responsibility 
for supervising the junior attorney.
    After finalizing the prehearing brief, the junior attorney 
mistakenly served it on individuals who were not subject to the APO. 
Those copies of the brief were retrieved before any unauthorized person 
saw the BPI. The junior attorney was admonished to be more careful, but 
the firm did not make any additional effective changes in its 
procedures for protecting BPI from public release. In finalizing the 
public version of the post-hearing brief, the junior attorney failed to 
redact BPI from one page. Again, copies of the erroneous public version 
were retrieved before any unauthorized person saw the BPI. In both 
instances, the breaches were inadvertent and the attorneys made prompt 
efforts to prevent the dissemination of BPI to the public.
    Both Mr. Soni and Mr. Lehat argued that they should bear limited 
blame for the breaches because they either did not supervise the junior 
attorney's compliance with APO compliance or were not present during 
the finalization of the briefs. This argument evinces a failure to 
understand that their noninvolvement is the problem, not an 
exculpation. By remaining removed, they effectively left the junior 
attorney with the ultimate responsibility for protecting BPI. Such a 
delegation might be reasonable if made to a junior attorney who had 
extensive experience with Commission practice or to a senior attorney 
who had a longer experience with the general practice of law, but the 
junior attorney in this case had neither.
    Therefore, the Commission found that Mr. Soni and Mr. Lehat 
breached their obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent the 
release of BPI at the time of the prehearing brief. They committed a 
second, more egregious breach in continuing to allow the junior 
attorney to operate unsupervised in the preparation of the post-hearing 
brief when they knew that the junior attorney's inexperience had 
already resulted in one breach. They committed an additional breach in 
failing to remedy the problems with the firm's APO compliance 
procedures that were exposed by the earlier breaches. Finally, Mr. Soni 
and Mr. Lehat again breached the APO by failing to certify to the 
return or destruction of the BPI obtained under the APO. This breach 
came about, in part, by the reliance on the same inexperienced junior 
attorney to prepare and transmit the certifications without appropriate 
supervision.
    The breaches outlined above show a serious disregard for the 
protection of BPI that ``rise[s] to the level of willful misbehavior or 
gross negligence characteristic of investigations where the Commission 
has issued public letters of reprimand.'' Summary of Commission 
Practice Relating to Administrative Protective Orders, 62 FR 13164, 
13167 (Case 8). The Commission did not place great weight on the fact 
that none of the breaches resulted in a widespread dissemination of 
sensitive information, since it viewed that circumstance as purely 
fortuitous. See Investigations Relating to Potential Breaches of 
Administrative Protective Orders, Sanctions Imposed for Actual 
Violations, 56 FR 4846, 4849 (Case 5).
    In light of the foregoing, the Commission determined to issue Mr. 
Lehat and Mr. Soni this public reprimand and to bar them from access to 
BPI for six months, starting with date of the publication of this 
notice in the Federal Register. In addition, the Commission will 
require that the next application, if any, that Mr. Lehat or Mr. Soni 
files with the Commission for access to materials released under APO 
must be accompanied by a detailed description of the procedures of his 
firm for protecting APO materials.
    Steven B. Lehat and Surjit P. Soni are reprimanded for (1) 
delegating primary responsibility for APO compliance to a junior 
attorney and then failing to provide appropriate supervision of that 
attorney, which resulted in two APO breaches, (2) failing to remedy 
obvious flaws in procedures for protecting BPI released to the firm 
under APO, and (3) failing to certify to the return or destruction of 
the BPI obtained under the APO. They are also barred from access to BPI 
for six months, starting with the date of publication of this notice in 
the Federal Register.
    The authority for this action is conferred by section 777(c)(1)(B) 
of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1677f(c)(1)(B)) and by section 
207.7(d) of the Commission's Rules of Practice and Procedure (19 CFR 
207.7(d)).

    Issued: November 27, 2000.

    By order of the Commission.
Donna R. Koehnke,
Secretary.
[FR Doc. 00-30671 Filed 11-30-00; 8:45 am]
BILLING CODE 7020-02-P