Justia Government Contracts Opinion Summaries

In 2008 the district court calculated damages for the government's partial breach of the Standard Contract for disposal of spent nuclear fuel using the 1991 Annual Capacity Report and the duty of good faith and fair dealing. The Federal Circuit, having set the 1987 ACR as the appropriate acceptance rate for a causation analysis under the Standard Contract, remanded. On remand, the district court set the amount of damages at $89,004,415. The Federal Circuit affirmed, holding that the new judgment accounts for the proper causation times and principle. View "Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. United States" on Justia Law

Four mobile home park owners appealed the dismissal of their suit under the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 (FHAA), 42 U.S.C. 3604, 3617, challenging a city zoning ordinance prohibiting any mobilehome park currently operating as senior housing from converting to all-age housing. The court held that because the FHAA was silent on whether such senior housing zones were permissible and because federal regulations allow for them, the judgment of the district court was affirmed. View "Putnam Family P'ship, et al. v. City of Yucaipa" on Justia Law

Appellants challenged the Agencies' execution of a tiered review process related to planning improvements to Virginia's Interstate 81 corridor. The district court rejected appellants' challenge which alleged various constitutional and statutory violations. On appeal, appellants claimed that the Agencies were attempting to foreclose consideration of environmentally friendly alternatives for specific sections of I-81 by choosing a corridor-wide improvement concept in the first stage of the review process. The court held, however, that appellants misapprehended the Agencies' position where the Agencies planned to comply with the Stipulation in this case and the National Environment Policy Act (NEPA), 42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq., by considering site-specific alternatives to the corridor-wide concept in subsequent stages. Because there was no actual dispute here, and because appellants could not show any injury or imminent threat of injury, this suit was not justiciable. Accordingly, the court dismissed the appeal. View "Shenandoah Valley Network v. Capka, et al." on Justia Law

This case stemmed from a dispute that arose after a 20 year lease program ended in which Polar Star owned 300 units of family housing located on Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska. Polar Star leased the units back to the Air Force but the parties could not agree on the purchase price or the amount of rent payable for an additional year on the lease. The United States first sent notice of a one-year renewal of the lease, then filed a protective eminent domain action to condemn a five-month leasehold in the houses. Polar Star subsequently appealed a number of the district court's rulings. The court held that the district court correctly decided that the government's notice of renewal successfully renewed the Project Lease for one year; the district court's finding that the expiration date of the Ground Lease was the error, and therefore the lease ran for 23 years, was not clearly erroneous; the district court correctly determined that it lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the amount of rent due from the Government to Polar Star on the renewal; Polar Star did not file an action in district court, so the only matter before the court was the Government's condemnation action; the district court correctly determined that the condemnation action should be dismissed; Polar Star's entitlement to rent beyond what the Government paid was not asserted on a claim or counterclaim in the district court; and plaintiffs may be entitled to pursue a claim in the Court of Federal Claims. Accordingly, the district court's judgment of dismissal was affirmed. View "United States v. Polar Star Alaska Housing Corp, et al." on Justia Law

The "Big Dig" highway project, built largely with federal funds, has transformed vehicular travel in Boston. Defendant supplied concrete and, on occasion, secretly substituted substandard material for the concrete required by contract specifications. Certain employees, including plaintiff, learned of the deception and brought a sealed qui tam action under the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. 3729-3733. The federal government intervened, and settled the case for several million dollars. Plaintiff received a percentage of the settlement. A few days after he signed the settlement, defendant dismissed plaintiff, allegedly for his refusal to take a drug test. Plaintiff sued, asserting pretext and retaliation. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the employer. The First Circuit vacated and remanded, applying a burden-shifting analysis and concluding that the circumstances of the firing are open to legitimate question and that the record, viewed as a whole and in the light most favorable to plaintiff, did not warrant the entry of summary judgment. View "Harrington v. Aggregate Indus., Inc." on Justia Law

Plaintiff, a concessionaire for a recreation facility at Lake Berryessa, made improvements for a resort, boat ramps, roads, sewage system, retaining walls, water purification plant, and parking. Before its agreement expired, plaintiff and others sued, under the Tucker Act (28 U.S.C. 1491(b)(1)-(4)) challenging a plan for soliciting new concessionaire bids, claiming that the federal agency had to require new concessionaires to compensate for facilities. The Court of Federal Claims held that outgoing concessionaires had to remove or abandon the facilities, unless the government required that they remain, in which case concessionaires would receive compensation for selected facilities. The Federal Circuit affirmed. When plaintiff's agreement expired in 2008, it left intact facilities behind, although the government did not request that it do so. Two years later, the government contracted with a new company. Plaintiff claims that the company or the government have used the facilities and filed a complaint, claiming that the government should be found to have retrospectively required their retention. The claims court dismissed based on issue preclusion and that plaintiff had no property interest in the facilities after expiration of the lease. The Federal Circuit affirmed, finding that the government did not "require" that the facilities be left. View "Laguna Hermosa Corp. v. United States" on Justia Law

In 2009, plaintiff applied for an IT specialist position with the Miami VA Healthcare System. He did not get the job and, after exhausting rights before the Department of Labor, filed an appeal, asserting that the VA violated his rights relating to veteran's preference. The AJ concluded that the Merit Systems Protection Board had no authority to review the merits of the VA’s non-selection of plaintiff. The Board agreed. The Federal Circuit vacated. There is no way to determine whether the Veterans' Preference Act (58 Stat. 390) has been violated without examining the grounds for non-selection. The Board has jurisdiction to determine whether the VA properly afforded plaintiff the right to compete for the job and properly determined, in accordance with 5 C.F.R. § 302.302(d), that he was not qualified for the position View "Lazaro v. Dep't of Veterans Affairs" on Justia Law

Illinois law provides that workers at public works projects must be paid not less than general prevailing rate of hourly wages for work of a similar character on non-federal public works in the locality, 820 ILCS 130/3. The public body awarding the contract is required to determine prevailing wage, but the Department of Labor conducts annual investigations of prevailing wage for each type of construction and demolition work in each locality and, in practice, public bodies simply adopt that determination. Landscape contractors who do non-federal public works projects sued the Department, arguing that it violated the due process clause by delegating ascertainment of prevailing wage to private entities, namely a labor union and contractors with which it has a collective bargaining agreement. The district judge granted summary judgment in favor of the Department. The Seventh Circuit affirmed, noting that the contractors did not object to the prevailing wage determination.View "Beary Landscaping, Inc. v. Costigan" on Justia Law

Defendant (principal contractor) sub-contracted with Stevens for work on military personnel housing at the Army base at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Stevens retained plaintiff to perform re-roofing. Plaintiff completed satisfactory work at the instruction of defendant and Stevens, but was not paid in full. Plaintiff originally sued under the Miller Act, 40 U.S.C. 3133, which provides federal question jurisdiction Plaintiff conceded at trial that defendants failed to secure a bond as required under the Miller Act. The federal claim was dismissed. The district court entered judgment in favor of plaintiff on a Louisiana-law breach of contract claims and allowed plaintiff to amend to allege diversity that existed at the time of the original complaint. The court declined to consider defendants' newly submitted evidence concerning diversity. The Fifth Circuit vacated. The district court may not have had proper subject-matter jurisdiction from the instant plaintiff filed; it incorrectly held that it had discretion to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the state claims, assuming that it had proper subject-matter jurisdiction under the Miller Act. The Miller Act claim was too attenuated to establish proper federal question jurisdiction and could not support supplemental jurisdiction.View "Arena. v. Graybar Electric Co., Inc.," on Justia Law

In 2010, the court of claims awarded owners $3,043,051, plus interest, for the temporary taking of a blanket easement over five parcels in the Otay Mesa area of San Diego County, California, limiting the government's liability to the period April, 1999 to October, 2008. The taking was the result of Border Patrol activities outside the boundaries of an easement that had been purchased by the government for those purposes, and included creating new roads, constructing a permanent tented structure, and installing under-ground motion-detecting sensors. The Federal Circuit affirmed the limitation of liability to five parcels and the stated time period, but reversed the calculation of damages. The claims court erred in concluding that the taking was temporary rather than a permanent physical taking. The government stipulated that its easement was "perpetual" and has not removed its equipment. View "Otay Mesa Prop. v. United States" on Justia Law