Contemporaneous protest must be explicit to support a later...

Contemporaneous protest must be explicit to support a later challenge to imported marble slab measurements; an unqualified acceptance of the measurement report and agreement to pay differential duty barred a belated request for re-measurement, so the rejection of re-measurement was upheld. For confiscation and penalty, the Tribunal treated the marginal excess over the tolerance limit as attributable to the measurement method used for irregular slabs and noted that trade practice allowed such variation. It held that customs penal consequences require deliberate misdeclaration, wilful misstatement, suppression, or other dishonest conduct, and a bona fide measurement dispute is insufficient. Redemption fine and penalty were set aside, while the differential duty liability remained.

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