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There are one order and six determinations to report here. In the aggregate the six determinations make up 18 pages of jurisprudence, and all six end with, “It is ORDERED, on the motion of the supervising administrative law judge, that the petition is dismissed with prejudice as of this date.” So … nothing much to see here.
Something I have been wondering about for a while: Why are certain petition resolutions nominated as “Orders” while others are nominated as “Determinations”? I had assumed that Orders resolve procedural motions, and determinations resolve substantive issues. But a summary determination can resolve a timeliness issue, so my assumption cannot be correct. And all of the “Determinations” this week resolve motions brought by the Supervising Administrative Law Judge (“SALJ”). Is it that Orders resolve non-final matters and Determinations resolve matters that may then be escalated to the Tribunal? Does it even matter?
For fun this week (since there was nothing fun about the six determinations), I applied my creativity to identify a few new euphemisms for “dismissed.”
There were four ALJ determinations posted on August 17, 2023. All were pre-hearing process determinations. How does one make interesting the analysis of three process dismissals and a timy dismissal? Try writing them up as haiku! For those unfamiliar with the format, haiku are brief poems in three lines and seventeen syllables. The first and third lines of a haiku are five syllables, and the middle line is seven syllables. They are intended to express, in elegant brevity, the essence of something the writer observed. History will, no doubt, judge me harshly for attempting to apply the haiku structure to TiNY case summaries.
The DTA snuck a few cases onto the website late on July 27, and I am just getting around to them now with the cases that dropped on August 3. There’s a Tribunal decision on a substantive legal issue, so, yay. And Judge Maloney, before whom I have appeared at least a couple of times, dropped a petitioner-favorable combination determination on a case involving the dark years between 2007 and 2014 when combination was all about substantial intercompany transactions.