Justia Government & Administrative Law Opinion Summaries

This appeal stemmed from a protracted contract dispute arising out of the construction of Meridian’s new City Hall. The City brought suit against the project’s construction manager, Petra, Inc., alleging that Petra breached the parties’ agreement in a number of ways. The City further claimed that Petra was not entitled to any additional fees for its work. Petra counterclaimed, seeking an equitable adjustment of its construction manager fee. After trial, the district court entered its findings of fact and conclusions of law, ruling against the City on all but one of its claims and awarding Petra an additional fee for its services. The court awarded Petra $595,896.17 in costs and $1,275,416.50 in attorney fees, but stayed enforcement of the judgment pending appeal. The City appealed. Finding no error in the district court's judgment in favor of Petra, the Supreme Court affirmed. View "City of Meridian v. PETRA Inc." on Justia Law

MedQuest is a diagnostic testing company that operates more than 90 testing facilities in 13 states. In 2006 a former MedQuest employee, brought a qui tam suit against MedQuest alleging violations of the False Claims Act. The United States intervened and obtained summary judgment ($11,110,662.71) that MedQuest used supervising physicians who had not been approved by the Medicare program and the local Medicare carrier to supervise the range of tests offered at the Nashville-area sites, and after acquiring one facility, MedQuest failed to properly re-register the facility to reflect the change in ownership and enroll the facility in the Medicare program, instead using the former owner’s payee ID number. The Sixth Circuit reversed, stating that the Medicare regulatory scheme (42 U.S.C. 1395x) does not support FCA liability for failure to comply with the supervising-physician regulations. MedQuest’s failure to satisfy enrollment regulations and its use of a billing number belonging to a physician’s practice it controlled do not trigger the hefty fines and penalties created by the FCA. View "United States v. MedQuest Assocs, Inc." on Justia Law

In 2008, the legislature enacted legislation to establish the Idaho Education Network (IEN), which was to be a high-bandwidth telecommunications distribution system for distance learning in every public school in the state. Syringa Networks, LLC (Syringa), an Idaho telecommunications company, entered into a “teaming agreement” with ENA Services, LLC (ENA). Pursuant to their agreement, ENA submitted a proposal in response to a request-for-proposals (RFP) with the Department of Administration, although the cover letter stated that both ENA and Syringa were responding jointly to the proposal. Qwest Communications Company, LLC, and Verizon Business Network Services, Inc., also submitted responsive proposals. The proposals were then scored based upon specific criteria; the ENA and Qwest proposals received the highest scores. The Department issued a letter of intent to award contracts to Qwest and ENA. One month later, it issued amendments to the two purchase orders to alter the scope of work that each would perform. Qwest became "the general contractor for all IEN technical network services" (providing the “backbone”) and ENA became "the Service Provider." The effect of these amendments was to make Qwest the exclusive provider of the backbone, which was what Syringa intended to provide as a subcontractor of ENA. Syringa filed this lawsuit against the Department, its director, the chief technology officer, ENA and Qwest. The district court ultimately dismissed Syringa’s lawsuit against all of the Defendants on their respective motions for summary judgment. Syringa then appealed the grants of summary judgment, and the State Defendants cross-appealed the refusal to award them attorney fees. Upon review, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment dismissing all counts of the complaint except count three seeking to set aside the State's contract with Qwest on the ground that it was awarded in violation of the applicable statutes. Furthermore, the Court reversed Qwest’s award of attorney fees against Syringa. We remand to the trial court the determination of whether any of the State Defendants were entitled to an award of attorney fees against Syringa for proceedings in the district court. The Court awarded costs and attorney fees on appeal to ENA. Because the State Defendants and Syringa both prevailed only in part on appeal, the Court did not award them either costs or attorney fees on appeal. View "Syringa Networks v. Idaho Dept of Admin" on Justia Law

In 1969, the Cities of Atlanta and College Park entered into an agreement for purposes of expanding Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. One of the provisions of the granted Atlanta the exclusive right to collect and levy occupation taxes from businesses located at the Airport that were within the city limits of College Park. In 2007, after commissioning a study for the purpose of reassessing this relationship, College Park informed Atlanta and Airport businesses that it would no longer honor the 1969 Agreement and that it would seek to collect occupation taxes from the Airport businesses including Atlanta's proprietary business operations. Atlanta filed a declaratory action in seeking a judgment that the 1969 Agreement controlled the collection of occupation taxes from businesses operating at the Airport within College Park. Both Atlanta and College Park moved for partial summary judgment, and, in ruling on the cross motions, the trial court found that Atlanta and College Park's 1969 Agreement was unenforceable. The trial court further ruled that OCGA 48-13-13 (5), which prohibited local governments from levying an occupation tax on any "local authority," precluded College Park from levying an occupation tax on Atlanta's proprietary operations because Atlanta met the definition of a "local authority" under the statute. Both parties appealed, and the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment invalidating the 1969 Agreement, but reversed the trial court's finding that the term "local authority" as used in OCGA 48-13-13 (5) included smunicipalities. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that the Court of Appeals was correct in its determination that the City of Atlanta was not a "local authority" as that term is used in the statute. View "City of Atlanta v. City of College Park" on Justia Law

Berrien worked for a civilian contractor (TECOM) at a military base in Michigan. He was fatally injured by a gutter that fell from the liquor store on the base while he was working alone, behind the store. The district court awarded $1.18 million in damages for failure to warn, under the Federal Tort Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. 1346(b)(1). The Sixth Circuit reversed. Because the Act does not waive the immunity of the United States for acts of independent contractors, liability could only be based on the negligence of government employees. There was no evidence that government employees actually knew of the dangerous condition of the liquor store, so that, under applicable Michigan law, any liability for failure to warn an invitee of a dangerous condition would have to have been based on a negligent failure to discover the dangerous condition. Even though the United States retained the right to conduct spot checks under its contract with TECOM, this right does not subject it to FTCA liability. View "Berrien v. United States" on Justia Law

In an interlocutory appeal, the issue before the Supreme Court in this case concerned the "contours" of the Board of Claims' exclusive jurisdiction pertaining to procurement litigation against state agencies. Specifically, the Court was asked to determine whether such jurisdiction foreclosed original-jurisdiction proceedings in Commonwealth Court, challenging an Department of General Services' (DGS) cancellation of a request for proposals and request for declaratory and injunctive relief. The matter arose from a 2010 DGS request for proposals for the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of a computer control system to monitor slot machines at gaming venues across the Commonwealth. The plan was to replace an existing system which had been provided by Intervenor-Appellant, GTECH Corporation. GTECH and Appellee Scientific Games International, Inc. (SGI), each submitted proposals, and DGS selected SGI for the award and proceeded with contract negotiations. GTECH was informed that the contract had been awarded to SGI and submitted a protest. Two months later, DGS’s Deputy Secretary for Administration issued a final determination denying GTECH’s protest in material part, with prejudice. GTECH appealed the determination and requested, among other things, that the request for proposals be cancelled. Subsequently, DGS announced that it was canceling the request for proposals and sent a letter to SGI indicating "with little elaboration" that the cancelation was in the best interests of the Commonwealth. Subsequently, SGI commenced an action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against the Departments of Revenue and General Services in the Commonwealth Court’s original jurisdiction and petitioned for a preliminary injunction. Upon review, the Supreme Court concluded that contractors, bidders, and offerors have limited recourse and remedies: "[r]elative to controversies in matters arising from procurement contracts with Commonwealth agencies, the Board of Claims retains exclusive jurisdiction (subject to all jurisdictional prerequisites), which is not to be supplanted by a court of law through an exercise of original jurisdiction. As to challenges to cancellations of solicitations asserted under Section 521 of the Procurement Code, the Legislature did not implement any waiver of sovereign immunity and afforded no remedy to aggrieved bidders and offerors which have not yet entered into an executed contract with a Commonwealth agency." View "Scientific Games Int'l v. GTech Corp." on Justia Law

Rohrer Towers is a housing facility for low-income elderly residents in Haddon Township, Camden County, New Jersey. Haddon leased Rohrer Towers to Housing Authority of the Township of Haddon, which entered into a housing assistance payments contract (HAP) with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Housing Act of 1937, 88 Stat. 633, 662–66. Haddon sued in 2007 alleging that HUD breached the HAP Contract from 2001-2006 by requiring rent “comparability studies” to be submitted along with requests for annual rent adjustments and adopting a one-percent reduction of the annual adjustment factors for units occupied by the same tenants from the previous year. The Claims Court agreed and ordered rent adjustments for all years other than 2002. The government claimed that the complaint should have been dismissed on statute of limitations grounds and appealed the decision that regulatory imposition of a mandatory one-percent rent reduction for non-turnover units was arbitrary, and beyond HUD’s authority. The Federal Circuit reversed the holding that the prevention doctrine applied to the circumstances surrounding Haddon’s 2001 and 2003 rent adjustment, but affirmed the holdings with respect to the contract years 2002 and 2004-2006. View "Haddon Housing Assocs. v. United States" on Justia Law

MES claimed that the Corps unfairly terminated three of its construction/renovation contracts. On appeal, MES and its President contended that the district court erred as a matter of law in ruling that their Bivens action was precluded by the Contract Disputes Act of 1978 (CDA), 41 U.S.C. 7101 et seq. The court held as a preliminary matter that it lacked jurisdiction to review MES's President's claim because the text and caption of the original timely notice of appeal failed to identify MES's President as a party appealing from the judgment. Accordingly, the court dismissed MES's President's appeal and only address MES's challenge to the judgment of dismissal. The court concluded that, in enacting the CDA, Congress created a comprehensive scheme for securing relief from the United States for any disputes pertaining to federal courts. The existence of that statutory scheme precluded MES from pursuing Bivens claims against federal employees in their individual capacities for alleged violations of due process or the First Amendment in terminating MES's federal construction contracts with the Corps. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment. View "M.E.S., Inc. v. Snell" on Justia Law

Plaintiff filed a qui tam lawsuit under the False Claims Act (FCA), 31 U.S.C. 3729, alleging that defendants fraudulently billed the United States for services provided to the military forces serving in Iraq. On appeal, plaintiff challenged the district court's dismissal of his complaint with prejudice. Because the court concluded that the district court had subject matter jurisdiction and the court found that the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act (WSLA), 18 U.S.C. 3287, applied to this action, the court reversed. Because it could be appropriate for the district court to make factual findings to consider the public disclosure claim urged by defendants the court remanded so the district court could consider this issue. View "United States ex rel. Carter v. Halliburton Co." on Justia Law

Casitas Water District operates the Ventura River Project, which is owned by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and provides water to Ventura County, California, using dams, reservoirs, a canal, pump stations, and many miles of pipeline. In 1997, the National Marine Fisheries Service listed the West Coast steelhead trout as an endangered species and determined that the primary cause of its decline was loss of habitat due to water development, including impassable dams. Casitas faced liability if continued operation of the Project resulted in harm to the steelhead, 16 U.S.C. 1538(a)(1), 1540(a)–(b). In 2003, NMFS issued a biological opinion concerning operation of a fish ladder to relieve Casitas of liability. Casitas opened the Robles fish ladder, then filed suit, asserting that the biological opinion operating criteria breached its 1956 Contract with the government or amounted to uncompensated taking of Casitas’s property. The Claims Court dismissed, citing the sovereign acts doctrine. The Federal Circuit affirmed dismissal of the contract claim, but reversed dismissal of Casitas’s takings claim. The court again dismissed, holding that Casitas had failed to show that the operating criteria had thus far resulted in any reduction of water deliveries, so a takings claim was not yet ripe. The Federal Circuit affirmed. View "Casitas Mun. Water Dist. v. United States" on Justia Law