As part of our postal industry practice, we annually compile a list of the Top 150 USPS suppliers based on data received under the Freedom of Information Act.

In FY 2017, USPS spent $13.9 billion on outside purchases and rental payments, an increase of $181 million over last year.  The biggest increase went to the top 10 USPS suppliers. That group received a total of $3.9 billion, up $400 million from last year and accounting for 28 percent of the Postal Service’s total spend. The Top 150 suppliers received $9.2 billion, about two-thirds of the agency’s total spend. Only 81 suppliers collected revenues exceeding $25 million in 2017.

As it has since 2002, Federal Express Corporation lands atop the list, this year with $1.61 billion in revenues—about a $68 million drop from its 2016 earnings. FedEx carries package and letter mail for the Postal Service. FedEx’s air cargo network contract with the Postal Service has been extended several times, and the latest extension takes it to September 29, 2024.

Continue Reading Top 150 U.S. Postal Service suppliers get more in FY 2017

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Contractors are now familiar with the Supreme Court’s June 2016 decision in Universal Health Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel. Escobar [PDF]. That decision recognizes False Claims Act liability for implied false certifications. But it also holds that FCA liability is available only when the false statement or omission is “material” to the Government’s decision to pay a claim. Our discussion of Escobar is available here.

Over the last 18 months, courts across the country have been asked to determine the impact of the Escobar decision. Ten of the eleven U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal have interpreted Escobar. Numerous U.S. District Courts have applied Escobar in resolving pre-trial motions. Cases based on “garden-variety breaches of contract or regulatory violations” are being thrown out. Even jury verdicts are being overturned for insufficient evidence of materiality. There is one inescapable conclusion from these post-Escobar decisions: materiality matters.

In this entry, we discuss two recent decisions that illustrate the impact of Escobar. One reaffirms the notion that, after Escobar, minor non-compliance with a regulatory requirement will not normally support FCA liability. The other highlights the critical role the government’s actions can play in establishing materiality. Together they reject jury verdicts imposing more than $1 billion in False Claims Act liability. Continue Reading After Escobar, materiality matters

The General Services Administration estimates the size of the federal market for commercial products to be about $50 billion a year. Manufacturers and distributors of commercial products have seen GSA’s multiple award schedule contracts as a good way to way to access federal customers. But a GSA schedule contract does not guarantee sales and the process of obtaining and adhering to such a contract presents its own headaches.

Soon there will be a better way.

Section 846 of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2018 establishes a program that will allow federal agencies to purchase commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) items through commercial e-commerce portals that are currently available only to the private sector. As long as the procurement is under the new $250,000 Simplified Acquisition Threshold, COTS products (not services) will be available for purchase Government-wide, presumably without additional competition and without a lengthy list of FAR clauses incorporated by reference.

Under the program, GSA will enter into “multiple contracts” with “multiple e-commerce portal providers.” To the maximum extent possible, the Government will adopt and adhere to standard terms and conditions established by the e-commerce portals themselves.

Continue Reading Will e-commerce portals replace the Federal Supply Schedules?

The standard form construction contract documents published by the American Institute of Architects are used widely throughout the construction industry. With assistance from federal agencies, the AIA created specific construction contract documents, such as the B-108-2009, to address the unique nature of federally-funded and insured projects. This year the AIA issued its once-a-decade revisions to address changes and trends in the industry. While the 2017 revisions d0 not materially alter the documents specifically tailored to federal projects, some of the changes will affect documents regularly used by federal contractors. They included changes in the insurance and indemnification clauses, addition of new limits on contractor claims, and new language addressing the treatment of retainage and the assessment of liquidated damages.

Husch Blackwell’s Brent Meyer prepared this overview of the noteworthy changes in the 2017 edition of the AIA contracts for Law 360.

 

Further reading—

7 Major Revisions To Standard Form Construction Contracts (Dec. 4, 2017)

Good faith and fair dealing puts an end to the “gotcha” in submittal review (June 26, 2017)

The Davis-Bacon Act does not apply to P3 projects (April 7, 2016)

After nearly a decade of litigation, justice was finally meted out in an extreme case of Government over-reach against a government contractor. The Government had sought to recover over $1.6 million from a government contractor whose subcontractor had underpaid a handful of employees by $9,900.

When all was said and done, a federal appellate court finally rejected the Government’s legal theory as essentially frivolous and ordered it to pay the contractor’s attorney fees, estimated at roughly $500,000.  When the Government expressed concern that this would have a “chilling effect” on its efforts to vigorously enforce the False Claims Act, the court stated: “One should hope so.”  The case is called U.S. ex rel. Wall v. Circle C Constr., LLC, No. 16-6169, (6th Cir. Aug. 18, 2017).

The story starts when the prime contractor, Circle C Construction, won a contract to construct buildings at the Fort Campbell military base. Circle C hired a subcontractor, Phase Tech, to perform the electrical work. The prime contract required compliance with the Davis-Bacon Act, which is similar to the Service Contract Act but applies to construction work. Like the Service Contract Act, the Davis Bacon Act requires the prime contractor and all subcontractors to pay construction workers the prevailing wages and benefits set by the Department of Labor. The Davis-Bacon Act also requires that the contractor submit certified payrolls as a condition of contract payment.

While Circle C did not have a written contract with its subcontractor Phase Tech, it did provide Phase Tech with the Wage Determinations from its prime contract. But Circle C did not verify whether Phase Tech was in compliance with the Davis Bacon Act. Phase Tech did not submit payroll certifications for two years after the project commenced, and later contended it was not aware it had to do so.

Eventually, one of Phase Tech’s employees brought a qui tam False Claims Act action against both Phase Tech and Circle C based on the under-payment of wages. Phase Tech settled the case by agreeing to pay $15,000, leaving Circle C as the remaining defendant. The Government agreed to take over the case from the employee and pursued the claim against Circle C.

Initially, the case did not go well for Circle C. The federal trial court hearing the case granted plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and damages of $555,000 (the entire cost of the electrical scope of work on the project), which was trebled to a total award of $1.66 million against Circle C.

Continue Reading Government ordered to pay contractor’s attorney’s fees in False Claims Act case

On August 29, 2017, the White House Office of Management and Budget announced that it would immediately pause the pay-data collection requirement of the revised EEO-1 form that was scheduled to take effect in March 2018. The data collection requirement would have significantly expanded employers’ reporting obligations to the EEOC to include pay data by gender, race and ethnicity on the annual EEO-1 form. The EEO-1 is required of employers with 100 or more employees and federal contractors and subcontractors with 50 or more employees.

The expanded EEO-1 reporting requirements had their genesis in an April 8, 2014 Presidential Memorandum, which directed the Secretary of Labor to propose “a rule that would require Federal contractors and subcontractors to submit to DOL summary data on the compensation paid their employees, including data by sex and race.” In a January 29, 2016 fact sheet, the Obama administration explained that the heightened EEO-1 reporting requirements would “help focus public enforcement of our equal pay laws and provide better insight into discriminatory pay practices across industries and occupations.”

President Trump’s OMB sees things differently. In its memorandum halting implementation of the proposed rule, OMB says that the heightened reporting requirements “lack practical utility, are unnecessarily burdensome, and do not adequately address privacy and confidentiality issues.” Further, these burdens outweighed any benefit that might come from implementing the expanded requirements at this time. OMB directed the EEOC to submit a new information collection package for the EEO-1 form for OMB’s review and to publish a notice in the Federal Register confirming that businesses may use the previously approved EEO-1 form in order to comply with their FY 2017 reporting obligations.  

Continue Reading OMB pauses new data collection for the 2017 EEO-1

Small business status impacts government contractors in several ways. Set-aside procurements and financial assistance programs are available for small businesses. Small business status is important for those seeking to meet the goals and commitments set forth in their small business subcontracting plans. Looming over all determinations of small business size status is the concept of affiliation. If the Small Business Administration finds that two business concerns are “affiliates” (one controls or has the power to control the other or a third party controls or has the power to control both), a business may no longer be a “small business.”

Affiliation determinations are likewise essential for pharmaceutical companies seeking to have the Food and Drug Administration waive the user fee for reviewing a new human drug application. Under § 736(d)(4) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, 21 U.S.C. § 379h(d)(4), a small business is entitled to a waiver of the prescription drug user fee when the business meets three criteria:

  1. The business must employ fewer than 500 persons, including employees of its affiliates.
  2. The business does not have a drug product that has been approved under a human drug application and introduced or delivered for introduction into interstate commerce.
  3. The application must be the first human drug application, within the meaning of the FD&C Act, that a company or its affiliate submits to the Food and Drug Administration for review.

Continue Reading FDA breaks with SBA on small business affiliation

In Joe Tex’s song about unrequited love, the Southern Soul singer belts out, “I gotcha, never shoulda promised to me.” Joe Tex may have thought this approach is the right one for romantic disappointment, but parties to a contract have a different set of obligations.

A lawsuit by Washington State contractor Nova Contracting should serve as an alert to owners dealing with the assessment of a contractor’s performance. Nova’s lawsuit came about because of the owner’s termination of the contract. Nova claimed the owner was using a “gotcha” review process for its submittals that was designed to prevent performance. The trial court agreed with the owner.

Culvert_with_a_dropNova appealed and the court of appeals found sufficient questions of fact to send the dispute back to the trial court. The opinion offers insight into fair dealing and good faith in the performance of construction contracts. Nova Contracting, Inc. v. City of Olympia, No. 48644-0-II (Wash Ct. App. Apr. 18, 2017). Continue Reading Good faith and fair dealing puts an end to the “gotcha” in submittal review

The U.S. Postal Service spends about $3 billion per year to move the mail by truck and does so under a special type of contract called a Highway Contract Route (HCR) contract. These contracts have unique contract clauses, and even their own lingo. For example, an HCR “amendment” is what the rest of the government contracting world would call a contract “modification.”

One of the biggest differences between HCR contracts and other government contracts is the Changes clause. Under an HCR contract, the contracting officer has limited ability to direct unilateral changes. The CO may only issue a unilateral change, called a “minor service change,” if the price impact would be $5,000 or less. Under a Contract Delivery Service (CDS) contract – a subset of HCR contracts for mailbox deliveries – unilateral changes must be $2,500 or less. Even for these changes, a contractor who disagrees with the CO’s determination may file a claim for additional compensation.

In addition to these monetary thresholds, unilateral changes are further restricted to certain types of changes. The only unilateral changes a CO can direct are an extension, a curtailment, a change in line of travel, a revision of route, and an increase or decrease in frequency of service or number of trips. The CO has no authority to unilaterally direct any other change, even if the price impact would be $5,000 or less. For example, the contracting officer may not unilaterally direct a contractor to change equipment or buy new equipment. Continue Reading The unique Changes clause in Postal Service HCR contracts

Every government contract contains implied duties, such as the duty to cooperate and the duty of good faith and fair dealing. Such implied duties generally prohibit one party from interfering with the other’s performance or taking actions that undermine the other’s expected benefit of the bargain.

Implied duties offer important protections when an issue is not clearly addressed in the text of the agreement. But courts have been reluctant to apply them in a way that overrides express contract language. A party generally does not breach the duty of good faith and fair dealing, for example, simply by exercising a right that is expressly provided in the contract.

But the government does not have carte blanche. Even if there is express language that gives the government a certain right, the government cannot exercise that right unreasonably or in a way that interferes with the contractor’s performance. In Agility Public Warehousing Company KSCP v. Mattis, No. 2016-1265 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 4, 2017), for example, the Federal Circuit explained that the government can breach the duty of good faith and fair dealing even if its conduct is otherwise consistent with the express terms of a contract.

Airmen serve dinner in the field in a mobile kitchen trailer during Global Medic 13 on Fort McCoy, Wis., July 16, 2013. The food service specialists are assigned to the 940th Force Support Squadron, Beale Air Force Base, Calif.
Source: DOD Image Library

Continue Reading Can the government contract around the duty of good faith and fair dealing?