Gellert Global Group Corp., a New Jersey food importer, filed a complaint at the Court of International Trade on 20 October. It asks the court to declare the Section 338 duties on Canadian goods unlawful and to order a Section 338 tariffs refund with interest, for Gellert and for a proposed class of importers. The complaint asks the court to certify the class. Plaintiffs’ counsel told the Center Square it hopes for a hearing within about 30 days, and the White House said it will defend the action vigorously.
Who the class includes depends on the entry record
The complaint defines the class as importers of record that have paid, or will be required to pay, Section 338 duties on merchandise entered or withdrawn from warehouse for consumption on or after 22 August 2026. The complaint dates the original start to 19 August, and CBP’s CSMS 69606660 records the three-day suspension that moved it to 12:01 a.m. on 22 August. Class members can be identified from CBP’s entry records, the complaint adds.
Importer of record is the status the complaint uses. In its October review of tariff recovery under other programs, Troutman Pepper Locke makes the same point: only importers of record have clear standing to seek refunds.
Gellert changed its name from Atalanta Corp. in 2025, and its import records still show Atalanta Corp. as importer of record. The prayer for relief asks for refunds on entries made under the old name too.
Cheese was listed on 8 September and taxed from 15 September
Proclamation 11064 added nearly every category of cheese to the list of products subject to the duties on 8 September, and collection on the new items began a week later. Section 338(d), in the wording the complaint quotes, lets duties be collected only beginning “thirty days after the date of such proclamation.”
On that gap the complaint builds a 30-Day Subclass: importers that paid on articles first listed in Proclamation 11064 or 11065 and entered them from 15 September up to, but not including, 8 October. Gellert says it paid more than $381,000 on such entries, and no Section 338 duty at all on its Canadian cheeses before 15 September. The administration has not said how it reads the waiting period for products added to an existing list, the Center Square reports. Jeffrey Schwab of the Liberty Justice Center, which represents Gellert, said this claim could be decided alone and could produce refunds without any ruling on the constitutional questions. That, he told the Center Square, “would address only a portion of the harm.”
A lawyer expects the challenge to the tariff authority itself to be harder
ArentFox Schiff partner James Kim told Supply Chain Dive that this is likely a harder case for challengers than IEEPA. The Supreme Court held that IEEPA did not authorize tariffs, and Section 338 expressly does, which in his words makes a challenge to the basic tariff authority “a steeper climb.”
His LinkedIn post puts the open questions in the statute’s own terms. Were Canada’s measures discrimination or retaliation for US tariffs, labels he says are not necessarily mutually exclusive? Does the 50 percent rate offset the burden on US commerce, as the statute requires?
The complaint answers the first question for two of the three measures. Canada’s alcohol and auto measures were responses to US tariffs, it says, and “retaliation is not discrimination.” The dairy quota terms were negotiated by the United States under USMCA. Count I is separate: Section 338 has been impliedly repealed or, at a minimum, Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 controls the president’s authority in this area.
Freestyle certification ordered no refund
On 8 October the court certified the Freestyle World class of importers of record that paid IEEPA duties, excluding any entity that had filed its own action. Thompson Hine says a class matters most for finally liquidated entries, which the government says it cannot reliquidate without a court order. Certification did not order a refund. Troutman Pepper Locke writes that class members are paid only if the court enters a class-wide injunction and CBP then processes their entries. For IEEPA claims the two-year filing limit for Court of International Trade actions still applies, the firm adds, and the certification order is silent on whether the class action pauses it. For importers with large finally liquidated balances, it says, a protective individual suit may still be the more certain path. The Freestyle class covers IEEPA duties only.
What to pull from the entry records
For the main class the complaint turns on two fields, the importer of record and the entry date on each entry. Pulling both for every Section 338 entry since 22 August shows which entries are in the class and could share in a Section 338 tariffs refund. The same entry-level view drives any landed cost recalculation once a refund lands, and the importer of record is the party whose name has to match.
The 30-Day Subclass adds a third. A product has to be first listed in Proclamation 11064 or 11065, so the listing date of each product belongs in the same pull, next to an entry date between 15 September and 7 October.
Gellert’s own figures show why the scope matters: more than $381,000 on goods first listed in those proclamations, entered from 15 September to 7 October, and at least $520,538 on 22 cheese entries made between 16 September and 11 October.