Case of the Month 2023 – October

The October edition of PCI’s Case of the Month Club will be a bit different from our prior sessions.  Instead of discussing one protest case and one CDA claims case, our panelists Tracye Howard and Brian Walsh are going to discuss an interesting CDA case with a bit of a twist as well as a recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit involving a False Claims Act controversy.  The CDA case, PAE Applied Technologies LLC, ASBCA No. 63233, 2023 WL 5827257 (Aug. 24, 2023), involves a very unusual set of facts. In a written letter to the contractor, a Navy contracting officer demanded that a contractor repay over $4 million it had received under a cost-reimbursement contract on the grounds that the costs incurred were unallowable Covid-related costs.  When the contractor appealed the Navy’s demand to the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals, the Navy filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that its demand was not a contracting officer’s final decision and therefore the board lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.   In denying the Navy’s motion, the board carefully analyzes the Navy’s actions and the words of its demand letter and concludes that it was appropriate for the contractor to treat it as a contracting officer’s final decision.  The Third Circuit case, U.S. and State of New Jersey et al v. Care Alternatives, 952 F.3d 89 (3rd Cir. 2020), involves an appeal from a district court’s ruling on summary judgment that a group of False Claims Act relators alleging false claims by health care providers for Medicare reimbursement had failed to satisfy the statute’s requirement to show falsity of the claims.  Although the case does not involve a Government contract, the court’s discussion of the statute and its careful analysis of the facts using criteria set forth by the U.S. Supreme Court in Escobar will prove instructive, particularly because it is not difficult to envision how the court’s analysis would be applied to a Government contracting case.  We look forward to seeing you on October 3 for another fascinating discussion!

Because the Case of the Month Club will look at recent cases based on their importance to Government Contracting, we will set the class’s Topic several weeks prior to the program.  This will help keep the program fresh.

• Case of the Month
  First Tuesday of the Month, 12:00 pm-1:00 pm (ET)
  10 Monthly Sessions, from January to December
  • January 3 – Obsidian Sols. Grp. v. United States and MP Sols
  • February 7 – Tolliver Group, Inc. v. United States and System Studies & Simulation, Inc. v. United States
  • March 7 – Alan E. Fricke Memorials, Inc. v. Dept. of Veterans Affairs and The Logistics Company, Inc. v. United States
  • April 4 – VSolvit, LLC, B-421048, Dec. 6, 2022, 2022 CPD ¶ 310 and Wu & Associates v. General Services Administration, CBCA 6760, 21-1 BCA ¶ 37965
  • May 2
  • June 6
  • September 5
  • October 3
  • November 7
  • December 5

Case of the Month Series 2023