Justia Government Contracts Opinion Summaries

The 2008 Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, 42 U.S.C. 1395w-3, unilaterally terminated a number of medical equipment and supplies contracts that had been made previously with individual providers by the government and purported to deny an "independent" cause of action or right to administrative or judicial review with regard to the terminations The court of claims dismissed a suit by plaintiff, whose contracts were terminated. The Federal Circuit reversed, noting several possible interpretations of the peculiar wording of the provision. The Act not withdraw traditional contract jurisdiction under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C 1491(a)(1) and plaintiff stated a claim. View "Cardiosom, L.L.C. v. United States" on Justia Law

In 2003, the company entered into contracts with the government for roof repairs of two government buildings. Due to delays the projects were not completed and accepted by the government until September and October 2005. At the time, Federal Acquisition Regulations required that a performance report be prepared for each construction contract for $550,000 or more, 48 C.F.R. § 36.201. The company received negative interim performance evaluations from the resident engineer for both projects in February, 2004. In March, 2006, the resident engineer issued proposed negative final performance evaluations for both projects. The company protested the proposed evaluations, asserting that subcontractors and other problems, beyond its control, caused the delays. In final performance evaluations, the engineer assigned an overall performance rating of unsatisfactory and assigned unsatisfactory ratings for each project in 15 individual categories. The contracting officer issued a final decision that the unsatisfactory performance appraisal was justified. The Claims Court rejected the company's suit. The Federal Circuit affirmed. A contractor is responsible for the unexcused performance failures of its subcontractors and the complaint did not allege facts that would excuse the delays. View "Todd Constr., L.P. v. United States" on Justia Law

In 1983, Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, authorizing contracts with nuclear plant utilities, generators of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HWL) under which the gVovernment would accept and dispose of nuclear waste in return for the generators paying into a Nuclear Waste Fund, 42 U.S.C. 10131. In 1983, the Department of Energy entered into the standard contract with plaintiff to accept SNF and HLW. In 1987, Congress amended the NWPA to specify that the repository would be in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The government has yet to accept spent fuel. The current estimate is that the government will not begin accepting waste until 2020, if at all. In 2001, plaintiff began constructing dry storage facilities to provide on-site storage for SNF rather than to continue using an outside company (ISFSI project). The Court of Federal Claims awarded $142,394,294 for expenses due to DOE’s breach; 23,657,791 was attributable to indirect overhead costs associated with the ISFSI project. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Breach of the standard contract caused plaintiff to build, staff, and maintain an entirely new facility; the ISFSI facilities had not existed prior to the breach and were necessitated by the breach. View "So. CA Edison Co. v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiff-Appellant Dawn Bunch brought suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging that Defendant Independent School District No. I-050 of Osage County (Prue Public Schools) violated her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. She appealed a district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the District in which the court concluded Plaintiff had no protected property interest in her employment and failed to show her speech was a motivating factor for her termination. An internal investigation found that Plaintiff “either [. . .] wasn’t properly trained or she was not doing her job as required.” The School Board in an open session, but without holding a due-process hearing, terminated Plaintiff's employment. Plaintiff's complaint claimed a property interest in her employment contract entitled her to a hearing before her employment was terminated. She also alleged the termination was in retaliation for her exercise of free speech rights because, earlier that fall, she had signed a state-court petition calling for a grand jury investigation into the activities of Board members, and she had complained to friends and family about the Board. Upon review of the trial court's record and the applicable authority, the Tenth Circuit found that Plaintiff's proffered evidence of discrimination did not amount to the requisite proof that her civil and constitutional rights were violated. The Court affirmed the lower court's grant of summary judgement in favor of the District. View "Bunch v. Ind. Sch. Dist. No. I-050 of Osage Cty." on Justia Law

The qui tam suit, brought by a former contractor for one of the defendants, alleges that defendants violated the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. 3729(a)(1) in connection with a sale of F-16 fighter jets to Greece, which paid for the jets with money borrowed from the United States. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. An FCA claim requires proof of an objective falsehood. There was no evidence to support allegations: that defendant lied about use of funds loaned by the U.S. to capitalize a Greek business development company; that defendant failed to disclose promptly its decision to delete a price adjustment clause from the draft contract; that defendant made misrepresentations relating to provisions concerning spare part purchases and an ill-fated "depot program;" and concerning a number of misrepresentations in two amendments to the contract. View "Yannacopoulos v. Gen. Dynamics" on Justia Law

The U.S. Department of Energy breached its agreement to accept spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power utilities, including plaintiff, a Wisconsin power cooperative, no longer in operation. Plaintiff maintains 38 metric tons of spent uranium on its property. Had DOE not breached the agreement, the material would have been removed in 2006. Plaintiff joined a consortium of 11 utilities to develop a private repository. The district court awarded about $37.6 million: $16.6 million for maintaining the fuel on-site from 1998 to 2006, $12 million for investment in the consortium, and $6.1 million for various overhead costs associated with mitigation. The Federal Circuit vacated in part. The claims court properly determined that plaintiff was entitled to damages for the entire period, 1999-2006; properly awarded overhead; properly offset the consortium costs; but should have limited the award with respect to the consortium to expenses incurred for mitigation. View "Dairyland Power Coop. v. United States" on Justia Law

The Department of Justice issued a request for quotations for an automated recruiting and staffing system, providing that conflicting provisions would be considered as exceptions to the terms of the RFQ, and noting that any exceptions could adversely impact the evaluation rating. Plaintiff's bid included exceptions relating to confidentiality of data and how payments would be made, among other matters. Plaintiff's program obtained a higher score on a performance test. The DOJ disqualified plaintiff's bid and accepted intervenor's bid, stating that plaintiff's slight technical advantage did not justify the higher price and that plaintiff's exceptions were unacceptable. The government accountability office, claims court, and Federal Circuit upheld the decision. The contracting officer was not required to engage in discussions about the exceptions before disqualifying the bid and acted rationally in disqualifying the bid. The officer was entitled to rely on a certification of compliance with RFQ terms for the bid that was accepted and rationally accepted that bid. View "Allied Tech. Grp., Inc. v. United States" on Justia Law

Plaintiff, who was employed as the City of McDonough's ("city") chief building inspector, brought suit against the city when the city refused to pay him severance under an employment agreement contract. At issue was whether the contract was binding to a successor municipal council in violation of OCGA 36-30-3(a). The court held that the contract was ultra vires and void because the contract was renewed automatically and the severance package required the city to pay plaintiff his salary and benefits for an entire year after the year in which the contract was terminated.

The Air Force petitioned for review of the decision and order of the Federal Labor Relations Authority ("FLRA") that a union proposal for uniform cleaning was a negotiable condition of employment. Based on a recently discovered Conference Report, the Air Force contended that the expenditure under 5 U.S.C. 5901(a) of funds was not authorized for the provision of services related to uniforms and statutory silence did not leave it discretion to do so. At issue was whether the court lacked jurisdiction under 5 U.S.C. 7123(c) to entertain the Air Force's petition because the Air Force failed to present its new interpretation of the uniform statutes. The court held that the Air Force's belated discovery of a constructional appropriations bar was an extraordinary circumstance under section 7123(c) that permitted consideration of an argument not presented by the FLRA. Were the exception not to apply, the FLRA's order would, in effect, permit the Air Force, by contract with the union, to authorize the expenditure of funds beyond what Congress had approved and therefore, the court granted the petition for review. Accordingly, whether as a matter of the plain text of the two uniform statues, or the Air Force's permissible interpretation of any statutory ambiguity to which the FLRA must defer, the Air Force correctly maintained that the union's uniform cleaning proposal was non-negotiated because the statute the Department of Defense administered did not authorize such payments for appropriated funds.

The State brought a complaint against BNSF Railway Co. ("BNSF") in November 2009 seeking a declaratory judgment requiring BNSF to abide by the terms of a 1984 agreement between them and a declaration that BNSF was in violation of that agreement; specific performance by BNSF of the agreement, and damages for BNSF's alleged breach of the agreement. The State subsequently filed an application for a preliminary injunction in June 2010 to prohibit BNSF from terminating the payment to the State and its short line operator per loaded car for each car handled in interchanges as required by Section 9 of the agreement. At issue was whether the district court's order granting the preliminary injunction was an abuse of discretion. The court held that the district court manifestly abused its discretion in issuing the preliminary injunction where it went beyond the State's requested relief and effectively ordered specific performance on the agreement under new terms substantially different than the prior agreed upon terms which severely limited termination of the new interchange agreement and was never part of the 1984 or 1986 agreements. Accordingly, the court reversed the order and resolved the injunction, remanding for further proceedings.