Sobrinos de Abacal, SL v Administration of Customs

• Jurisdiction: Cuba
• Date: 28 February 1956
• Court: Supreme Court (Cuba)

Cuba, Supreme Court.

(Rosell (President); Cantero, Torres, Portela and Miranda.)

Sobrinos de Abacal, S.L.

and

Administration of Customs.

Treaties — Operation and Enforcement of — Relation to Municipal Law — Treaty Enunciating General Principles Subordinated to Subsequent Municipal Legislation — The Law of Cuba.

The Facts.—This was an appeal from a decision of an inferior Court.

Article 3 of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade of 1947, brought into operation in Cuba by Decree No. 4169 of December 30, 1947, provides that internal taxes shall not be applied to afford preference to domestic over imported products. Under Article 4 of Decree No. 5122 of 1949, import duties were imposed on certain merchandise. The appellant Company claimed a declaration that the levying of the duty under the Decree of 1949 on goods which it had imported, was unlawful, on the ground that the Decree infringed the terms of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The Court of first instance dismissed the claim, holding that the Decree could not be regarded as invalidated by “provisions of an international treaty that are limited to enunciation, in abstract terms, of the principle of commercial reciprocity, and that in and of themselves have no obligatory force until such provisions have been ratified subsequently to the enforcement of the Treaty”.

The Company now appealed against that decision to the Supreme Court.

Held: that the appeal must fail. The provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade were in broad terms and could not invalidate subsequent municipal legislation.

The Court said: “The first ground of appeal deals exclusively with the issue whether the product imported is comprised within the exemptions of Article 6 of Decree 5122 of 1949, according to the provisions of Article 3 of the...