Claims and Disputes

Cases at the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals often require scientific or other technical evidence that is best explained by an expert witness. Though it conducts no jury trials and the rules do not expressly require it, the board generally considers itself the gatekeeper of junk scientific evidence. The board regularly considers motions challenging the admissibility of expert testimony. It also regularly grants them.

In the appropriate case, a pretrial motion to exclude an expert’s testimony can be an effective tool. Here we address the most common grounds for challenges to expert testimony at the ASBCA.

Expert testimony must be reliable.

The basic test for the admissibility of expert testimony in federal courts is set forth in Rule 702 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which codifies the Supreme Court’s decisions in Daubert v. Merell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993), and Kumho Tire Co. v. Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999). Under Rule 702, expert testimony must not only be helpful, it must be based on sufficient facts or data, and be the product of reliable principles and methods.

Parties in litigation at the ASBCA are not exempt from the reliability requirement. The board frequently refers to the standards set forth in Rule 702 as a prerequisite to the consideration of expert testimony. Even without a jury, the board will exclude expert testimony that the board finds unreliable. Board rules are generally more flexible than the federal rules when it comes to the admissibility of evidence, but an expert’s opinion must be sufficiently reliable for the board to consider it. Universal Yacht Services, Inc., ASBCA No. 53951, 04-2 BCA ¶ 32648 (May 24, 2004) [pdf].

Contractors know that discovery is the most time-consuming and expensive part of litigation. Until now, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have done little to address the problem. Parties that preserve too much data are burdened with the cost of collecting and reviewing it. Parties that preserve too little risk not having access to key evidence or being penalized for spoliation.

While we’re not sure the problem can be fixed with a few changes to the procedural rules, reducing discovery costs appears to be a key goal of the recently-proposed amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure [pdf]. The revised rules were passed by the Judicial Conference of the United States in September 2014 and are now awaiting approval by the Supreme Court. Assuming they are approved, the amendments will become effective on December 1, 2015.

The proposed amendments have three primary objectives: (1) improve early and active judicial case management; (2) enhance the importance of proportionality in the discovery process; and (3) encourage greater cooperation among litigants. The amendments would also resolve an apparent circuit split over when sanctions may be imposed for failing to preserve electronically stored information. The changes aimed at accomplishing these objectives appear in the proposed amendments to Rules 1, 4, 16, 26, and 37.

Controlling legal spend is a frequent and important topic of discussion, especially among in-house counsel and their litigation teams. Much of the discussion focuses on the problem of soaring discovery costs driven by the proliferation of electronic data. As an eDiscovery attorney, I employ early case assessment strategies and tools, technology-assisted review, and even low-cost outside staff attorneys to try and curtail the cost of discovery. In the end, the effectiveness of these cost-reduction alternatives hinges on whether clients have done their part to reduce the volume of data upstream.

Beyond implementing a formal records retention plan, there are a number of fairly simple steps that companies can take to help reduce litigation costs. Items 1-5 help reduce the volume of data that needs to be collected and reviewed. Items 6-8 will help ensure that your litigation budget is not exhausted on spoliation or sanctions motions.

1.   When implementing an email archive, be mindful of how it will impact litigation costs.

An email archive is not a cure to your litigation woes. Storing every company email that was sent or received in an email archive may make preservation easy, but it may also be contributing to your soaring discovery costs. Despite claims to the contrary, most archives have poor search and export features. It is also very difficult to pull out only responsive email from an archive.  Instead, you end up overspending on attorney review of irrelevant data or producing mounds of irrelevant data.

One way to control this issue is to tailor the archive for your own business and legal needs from the beginning. Do you really need every employee’s email messages for the last 10 years? Very few industries have regulatory requirements that require such broad retention. Even those that do usually only apply to a small subset of employees. Confirm any applicable regulatory requirements and consider your own business and legal needs. Consider creating email groups with different retention cycles.

The attorney-client privilege applies with equal force to internal investigations today as it did 30 years ago thanks to the D.C. Circuit’s recent decision in In re: Kellogg Brown & Root, Inc., No. 14-5055 (D.C. Cir. June 27, 2014). The appeals court decision vacates the March 6, 2014 district court decision in the same case. At the district court, Judge James Gwin ruled that the attorney-client privilege did not protect documents developed during KBR’s internal investigations of potential fraud relating to its LOGCAP III contract. According to Judge Gwin, KBR’s investigations were not privileged because they were conducted “pursuant to regulatory law and corporate policy rather than for the purpose of obtaining legal advice.”

The D.C. Circuit’s decision reverses Judge Gwin’s ruling. The decision recognizes the “uncertainty generated by the novelty and breadth of the District Court’s reasoning” and echoes the Supreme Court’s concern that an “uncertain privilege, or one which purports to be certain but results in widely varying applications by the courts, is little better than no privilege at all.” If the district court’s decision were to stand, “businesses would be less likely to disclose facts to their attorneys and to seek legal advice.” The behavior created by this uncertainty in the attorney-client privilege would undercut the very compliance and disclosure regulations central to Judge Gwin’s analysis.

[UPDATE: On May 26, 2015, the Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Carter and held that the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act is limited to criminal offenses. Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. Carter, No 12-1497 (U.S. May 26, 2015) [pdf]. Our discussion of the Carter decision is available here.]

Whether the Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act tolls the six-year statute of limitations for civil claims under the False Claims Act will soon be addressed by the Supreme Court. In Kellogg Brown & Root Services, Inc. v. United States ex rel Benjamin Carter, No. 12-1497 (July 1, 2014), the Court will have the opportunity to address several important questions about the application of the WSLA. Should it apply to civil claims or be limited to criminal actions? Does the tolling specified in the WSLA require a formal declaration of war? And does the WSLA apply to a qui tam claim in which the United States declines to intervene?

[Note:  The case also asks the Court to address whether the FCA’s “first-to-file” bar applies to cases filed after the first case is dismissed.  We’ll look at that question in another post.]

The case comes to the Supreme Court following the Fourth Circuit’s decision in U.S. ex rel Carter v. Halliburton Co., 710 F.3d 171 (4th Cir. 2013). In that case, the Fourth Circuit held that the WSLA tolled all civil actions—including civil FCA claims brought by qui tam relators—until the President or Congress declared a “termination of hostilities.” The Supreme Court accepted Halliburton’s petition for certiorari and will hear the case in 2015.

We believe the Fourth Circuit’s opinion represents a significant expansion of the WSLA. As Judge Agee points out in his dissenting opinion, a particularly troublesome aspect of the Fourth Circuit’s decision is its application of the WSLA to civil qui tam actions in which the United States has not intervened. The underlying purpose of the WSLA is to allow the law enforcement arm of the United States government to focus on its “duties, including the enforcement of the espionage, sabotage, and other laws’” in times of war. Id. (citing Bridges v. United States, 346 U.S. 209, 219 n. 18 (1953)). In a qui tam action initiated by a private citizen, the rationale for tolling the limitations period is diminished.

The Federal Circuit’s decision in Raytheon Co. v. United States, No. 2013-5004 & 2013-5006 (Fed. Cir. April 4, 2014) [pdf] affirms a $59-million judgment arising from a government challenge to Raytheon’s calculation and payment of pension fund adjustments. It is certainly an important case because of the money at stake for Raytheon and its analysis…

The Severin doctrine restricts the ability of prime contractors to hold the government responsible for costs incurred by subcontractors. It is often of limited practical effect because it can usually be avoided by contract. Liquidation agreements, sponsorship agreements, pass-through agreements, and other similar agreements often include a conditional release that limits the subcontractor’s recovery to the amount that the prime contractor recovers from the government. With this protection, prime contractors are often willing to pursue subcontractor claims on a pass-through basis.

As we discussed in part one of this post, the Severin doctrine is nevertheless a recurring issue in federal contracts. Here we address two recent cases that explore the application of the Severin doctrine when the rights of the prime contractor and subcontractor are not expressed in a written agreement.

No subcontract at all

The decision in Parsons-UXB Joint Venture, ASBCA No. 56481, 13-1 BCA ¶ 35,378 (Aug. 1, 2013) [pdf] addresses the application of the Severin doctrine when there is no written subcontract. Parsons and UXB formed a joint venture to complete a Navy project to restore the Hawaiian island of Kaho’olawe, which had been used as a weapons range. The JV was “unpopulated,” meaning that employees of Parsons and UXB did all the work even though the JV formally held the contract. There were no subcontracts in place between the JV and either Parsons or UXB. When a dispute developed over costs incurred on the project and the JV brought the case to the Armed Services Board, the Navy cited the Severin doctrine. Without a subcontract, the Navy asserted that the JV could not be liable for costs incurred by Parsons or UXB and therefore could not pursue claims on their behalf.

Read the press about Judge James Gwin’s decision in  United States ex rel. Barko v. Halliburton Co., No. 1:05-cv-1276 (D.D.C. Mar. 6, 2014), and you might see it as the beginning of the end for the attorney-client privilege in internal investigations. While the ultimate implications of the decision remain to be seen, that’s not how we see it.

The attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine are alive and well, as is their application to internal investigations. The FAR clause implementing the requirement for a Code of Business Ethics and Conduct preserves the contractor’s right to conduct an internal investigation subject to the protections of the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine. See FAR 52.203-13. The Justice Department’s Principles of Federal Prosecution of Business Organizations explicitly states that a company is not required to waive privilege in order to get credit for cooperating with a government investigation. “[W]aiving the attorney-client and work product protections has never been a prerequisite under the Department’s prosecution guidelines for a corporation to be viewed as cooperative.”

For federal contractors, publicly-traded companies, and others in highly-regulated industries, the real question presented by Barko is more granular: How can my company avoid the same result?

Now for some good news in government contracts law. On February 11, 2014, a three-judge panel of the Federal Circuit reversed the Court of Federal Claims decisions in Metcalf Constr. Co. v. United States, 102 Fed. Cl. 334 (2011) (Metcalf I) and Metcalf Constr. Co. v. United States, 107 Fed. Cl. 786 (2012) (Metcalf II). The case has been remanded for further proceedings and application of the correct legal standards. A copy of the Federal Circuit’s decision is available here.

No requirement for proof of specific targeting

The main issue on appeal in Metcalf was the legal standard applicable to contractor claims that the government breached its duty of good faith and fair dealing. The Court of Federal Claims concluded that the decision in Precision Pine & Timber, Inc. v. United States, 596 F.3d 817, 829 (Fed. Cir. 2010) requires proof of specific targeting—that Government actions were “specifically designed to reappropriate the benefits” of a contract. Incompetence and failure to cooperate are not enough.

The Federal Circuit rejects this analysis. “The trial court misread Precision Pine, which does not impose a specific-targeting requirement applicable across the board or in this case.”

The Federal Circuit’s opinion in Metcalf also rejects the Government’s attempt to limit the scope of the duty of good faith and fair dealing. Citing Precision Pine, the Government argued that the duty of good faith and fair dealing “cannot expand a party’s contractual duties beyond those in the express contract or create duties inconsistent with the contract’s provisions.” In its appellate brief, the Government urged a broad application of that language that would almost always preclude a good faith and fair dealing claim. Citing its interpretation, the Government argued that Metcalf’s claim must fail because it could not “identify a contract provision that the Navy’s inspection process violated.”

That argument went nowhere with the Federal Circuit. According to the court’s decision, the Government’s interpretation “goes too far:  a breach of the implied duty of good faith and fair dealing does not require a violation of an express provision of the contract.”

As part of the Obama Administration’s push to raise the minimum wage, the President announced during his State of the Union speech that he intends to issue an Executive Order raising the minimum wage for workers on federal contracts to $10.10 per hour. We’ll wait for the Executive Order itself before offering specific guidance on its requirements, but it’s not too early for contractors to begin thinking about how this might impact their business. Here are a few things to consider—

1.  The new minimum wage could apply to some current contracts.

The Obama Administration has asserted that the wage increase will apply only to new federal contracts—i.e., those awarded after the effective date of the Order. But the regulations implementing the prevailing wage requirements could mean that the $10.10 minimum will also apply to some current contracts.

The McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act requires contractors and subcontractors performing service contracts to pay their workers not less than the locally prevailing wage or the amount paid by the predecessor contractor under a collective bargaining agreement. The Department of Labor prepares wage determinations establishing the minimum wages and fringe benefits based on surveys of local prevailing wages or existing collectively bargaining agreements.

FAR provisions implementing the Service Contract Act contemplate that the prevailing wages may change during the course of a service contract. Under FAR 22.1007, the contracting officer is required to obtain and incorporate a new wage determination for modifications that extend the term of an existing contract or make a change in the scope of work “whereby labor requirements are affected significantly.” FAR 22.1007(b). A new wage determination is also required on the annual or biennial anniversary date of multi-year service contracts. FAR 22.1007(c). Depending on how the Executive Order implementing the new minimum wage is worded, the wage determination applicable to contract modifications or to multi-year service contracts could require current contractors to pay the new $10.10 minimum wage.