Cofan Associates, Inc. v. United States

4 Cl. Ct. 85, 1983 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1543
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedDecember 13, 1983
DocketNo. 201-82C
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 4 Cl. Ct. 85 (Cofan Associates, Inc. v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cofan Associates, Inc. v. United States, 4 Cl. Ct. 85, 1983 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1543 (cc 1983).

Opinion

OPINION ON DEFENDANT’S MOTION AND PLAINTIFF’S CROSS-MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT

PHILIP R. MILLER, Judge:

The Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965, 16 U.S.C. §§ 4601-4 to 4601-11 (1980) established a program of matching federal grants to state and local governments for planning, acquisition and development of outdoor recreation lands. Pursuant to this authority on December 21, 1977, the United States Bureau of Outdoor Recreation (BOR) of the Department of the Interior entered into an agreement with the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico for the acquisition of land and the construction of a regional park by the municipality of Caguas. BOR agreed to provide $820,000 of the total estimated project cost of $1,640,000 and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) the remainder.

[86]*86Plaintiff is a disappointed bidder for a construction contract on the regional park project advertised by the municipality of Caguas. Plaintiff alleges that it was low bidder but the municipality’s procurement official improperly failed to award it the contract. It claims damages totaling $17,-477,484 for its bid preparation costs, delays, employees’ wages and salaries, depreciation, overhead, lost profits and other items. It seeks to have the United States held liable for these damages because the construction project was funded and sponsored by BOR and HUD.

A bidder on a federal contract may be entitled to damages, generally limited to bid preparation costs, when it is able to ■show that it submitted the lowest responsive bid on a contract and that it was not awarded the contract because of some arbitrary and capricious action by the contracting agency. Heyer Products Co. v. United States, 135 Ct.Cl. 63, 69, 140 F.Supp. 409, 412 (1956); Keco Industries, Inc. v. United States, 192 Ct.Cl. 773, 780, 428 F.2d 1233, 1237 (1970); Keco Industries, Inc. v. United States, 203 Ct.Cl. 566, 574, 492 F.2d 1200, 1203 (1974). The rationale of these decisions is that when someone submits a bid on a contract to a federal agency there is an implied contract that the bid will be fairly considered. Thus, there is a jurisdictional basis for such cases under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1491(a) (1980), as amended, which authorizes this court to render judgment on a claim against the government “founded * * * upon any express or implied contract with the United States.”

It is undisputed that plaintiff did not submit its bid to a federal agency, but to Caguas. However, plaintiff asserts that a contractual relationship with the United States existed because it submitted a bid to develop a project funded by federal agencies and subject to federal controls.

However, it is now firmly established that a person who enters into a contract with a state, municipality or other entity to perform services on a project funded in part by loans or grants-in-aid from the United States may not thereby be deemed to have entered into a contract with the United States. Nor is the result any different because the United States has imposed guidelines or restrictions on the use of the funds, including procurement procedures. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co. v. United States, 228 Ct.Cl. 146, 655 F.2d 1047 (1981); Somerville Technical Services v. United States, 226 Ct.Cl. 291, 640 F.2d 1276 (1981); Porter v. United States, 204 Ct.Cl. 355, 496 F.2d 583 (1974), cert. denied, 420 U.S. 1004, 95 S.Ct. 1446, 43 L.Ed.2d 761 (1975); D.R. Smalley & Sons v. United States, 178 Ct.Cl. 593, 372 F.2d 505, cert. denied, 389 U.S. 835, 88 S.Ct. 45, 19 L.Ed.2d 97 (1967).

In the most recent of these cases, Aetna Casualty and Surety Co., a construction company and its surety sued the United States for their asserted losses in completing a federally insured housing project. They alleged that the government, as insurer through HUD, had implicitly made itself a party to the construction contracts by its dominant control and supervision of every phase of the project. In rejecting this claim, the court stated (228 Ct.Cl. at 152, 655 F.2d at 1052):

Plaintiffs’ allegations are but the most recent in a litany of cases where those indirectly associated with a dispensation of the federal largess have sought to recover an assortment of damages from the Government. It is well-settled, however, that where the United States does not make itself a party to the contracts which implement important national policies, no express or implied contracts result between the United States and those who will ultimately perform the work.

In Somerville Technical Services, the plaintiff was a construction contractor that built a water treatment facility under a contract with the Village of Roscommon, Michigan. The project was fully funded through a loan and a grant from the Farmers Home Administration of the United States Department of Agriculture (FmHA). FmHA required that its representatives approve all contracts, attachments, and similar documents, all partial and final payment [87]*87estimates, and all change orders. After the work was completed, the village agreed to pay a cost over-run incurred by Somerville, contingent upon obtaining the additional funds from the United States or the state. Upon the FmHA’s rejection of the request for the additional money, plaintiff sued the United States for the unpaid balance, basing its claim on an implied in fact contract that plaintiff alleged obligated the United States to pay the balance of its loss. However, the court held that there was no contract, express or implied, because there was no privity between the plaintiff and the United States. The fact that the United States carefully controlled the expenditures for the project through the terms of the contract and the FmHA regulations was not sufficient basis for the court to find an express or implied contract between the United States and plaintiff.

In Smalley, the United States had made a grant to the State of Ohio for 90 percent of the cost of building a highway in that state. The plaintiff was a contractor who had lost almost three million dollars on the project. The state entered into a settlement with the plaintiff for about one million dollars, and the plaintiff sued the United States for the unpaid balance, claiming that the comprehensive federal regulations governing the highway construction contract created either an express or an implied contract between it and the United States. The court rejected that argument, explaining (178 Ct.Cl. at 597-98, 372 F.2d at 507):

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4 Cl. Ct. 85, 1983 U.S. Claims LEXIS 1543, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cofan-associates-inc-v-united-states-cc-1983.