Justia Contracts Opinion Summaries

This appeal stemmed from a written agreement between the City of Rutland and the Vermont Swim Association (VSA) that granted VSA the right to host its annual swim meet at a facility in a city park. VSA appealed the trial court's award of attorney's fees to the City. Because the plain language of the parties' contract did not require VSA to pay attorney's fees incurred by the City in pursuing either indemnity from VSA or other third-party actions, the Supreme Court reversed the trial court's ruling and remanded the case for further proceedings.

The 2008 Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act, 42 U.S.C. 1395w-3, unilaterally terminated a number of medical equipment and supplies contracts that had been made previously with individual providers by the government and purported to deny an "independent" cause of action or right to administrative or judicial review with regard to the terminations The court of claims dismissed a suit by plaintiff, whose contracts were terminated. The Federal Circuit reversed, noting several possible interpretations of the peculiar wording of the provision. The Act not withdraw traditional contract jurisdiction under the Tucker Act, 28 U.S.C 1491(a)(1) and plaintiff stated a claim.

In 2003, the company entered into contracts with the government for roof repairs of two government buildings. Due to delays the projects were not completed and accepted by the government until September and October 2005. At the time, Federal Acquisition Regulations required that a performance report be prepared for each construction contract for $550,000 or more, 48 C.F.R. § 36.201. The company received negative interim performance evaluations from the resident engineer for both projects in February, 2004. In March, 2006, the resident engineer issued proposed negative final performance evaluations for both projects. The company protested the proposed evaluations, asserting that subcontractors and other problems, beyond its control, caused the delays. In final performance evaluations, the engineer assigned an overall performance rating of unsatisfactory and assigned unsatisfactory ratings for each project in 15 individual categories. The contracting officer issued a final decision that the unsatisfactory performance appraisal was justified. The Claims Court rejected the company's suit. The Federal Circuit affirmed. A contractor is responsible for the unexcused performance failures of its subcontractors and the complaint did not allege facts that would excuse the delays.

In 1983, Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, authorizing contracts with nuclear plant utilities, generators of spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HWL) under which the gVovernment would accept and dispose of nuclear waste in return for the generators paying into a Nuclear Waste Fund, 42 U.S.C. 10131. In 1983, the Department of Energy entered into the standard contract with plaintiff to accept SNF and HLW. In 1987, Congress amended the NWPA to specify that the repository would be in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The government has yet to accept spent fuel. The current estimate is that the government will not begin accepting waste until 2020, if at all. In 2001, plaintiff began constructing dry storage facilities to provide on-site storage for SNF rather than to continue using an outside company (ISFSI project). The Court of Federal Claims awarded $142,394,294 for expenses due to DOEâs breach; 23,657,791 was attributable to indirect overhead costs associated with the ISFSI project. The Federal Circuit affirmed. Breach of the standard contract caused plaintiff to build, staff, and maintain an entirely new facility; the ISFSI facilities had not existed prior to the breach and were necessitated by the breach.

Plaintiff-Appellant Dawn Bunch brought suit under 42 U.S.C. 1983 alleging that Defendant Independent School District No. I-050 of Osage County (Prue Public Schools) violated her First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. She appealed a district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the District in which the court concluded Plaintiff had no protected property interest in her employment and failed to show her speech was a motivating factor for her termination. An internal investigation found that Plaintiff âeither [. . .] wasnât properly trained or she was not doing her job as required.â The School Board in an open session, but without holding a due-process hearing, terminated Plaintiff's employment. Plaintiff's complaint claimed a property interest in her employment contract entitled her to a hearing before her employment was terminated. She also alleged the termination was in retaliation for her exercise of free speech rights because, earlier that fall, she had signed a state-court petition calling for a grand jury investigation into the activities of Board members, and she had complained to friends and family about the Board. Upon review of the trial court's record and the applicable authority, the Tenth Circuit found that Plaintiff's proffered evidence of discrimination did not amount to the requisite proof that her civil and constitutional rights were violated. The Court affirmed the lower court's grant of summary judgement in favor of the District.

The qui tam suit, brought by a former contractor for one of the defendants, alleges that defendants violated the False Claims Act, 31 U.S.C. 3729(a)(1) in connection with a sale of F-16 fighter jets to Greece, which paid for the jets with money borrowed from the United States. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of defendants. The Seventh Circuit affirmed. An FCA claim requires proof of an objective falsehood. There was no evidence to support allegations: that defendant lied about use of funds loaned by the U.S. to capitalize a Greek business development company; that defendant failed to disclose promptly its decision to delete a price adjustment clause from the draft contract; that defendant made misrepresentations relating to provisions concerning spare part purchases and an ill-fated "depot program;" and concerning a number of misrepresentations in two amendments to the contract.

In 2001, Plaintiff Allied Bail Bonds, Inc. and Defendants the Kootenai County Sheriff and Board of Commissioners entered into a settlement agreement setting forth procedures for how inmates at the county jail would be informed of and obtain bail bonds. Allied brought suit alleging several claims including breach of the settlement agreement. The district court dismissed Allied's claims. Principal among them was Allied's contention that the Sheriff wrongfully diverted Allied's potential customers away from Allied, toward credit card companies, with the intent to harm Allied's business. Upon review, the Supreme Court found that Allied ran afoul of the technical pleading requirements of the legal authorities it used to support its claims. As such, the Court held that the district court properly dismissed Allied's claims against Defendants.

In a 1905 water exchange agreement, Big Ditch Irrigation Company conveyed its Big Cottonwood Creek water right to the Salt Lake City Corporation in exchange for the City's commitment to supply Big Ditch with a specified quantity of irrigation-quality water from City sources. Concerned that Big Ditch was infringing upon the City's water rights, the City initiated this case against Big Ditch and four Big Ditch shareholders in district court. The City sought declaratory judgment on several issues. Big Ditch and the shareholders counterclaimed. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the City on most major issues. On appeal, the Supreme Court held that the district court properly dismissed the defendants' counterclaims and correctly concluded that the City holds title to the water rights conveyed in the agreement. The Court held, however, that the district court erred in (1) determining that Big Ditch did not have a right to file change applications; (2) determining that the parties had modified the agreement or, alternatively, that Big Ditch was estopped from enforcing its right to the amount of water specified in the agreement; and (3) refusing to dismiss the City's claims against the shareholders.

Twenty three former tribal employees sued the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma for breach of employment contracts. The contracts contained a limited waiver of sovereign immunity. Tribal law requires that waiver of sovereign immunity must be consented to by the Business Committee of the Tribe by resolution. The trial judge, on motion for reconsideration, granted the Tribe's motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction and dismissed the case. On appeal, the question before the Supreme Court was whether the Tribe expressly and unequivocally waived its sovereign immunity with respect to Plaintiffs' employment contracts. Upon review of the contracts and the applicable tribal resolutions and legal standards, the Supreme Court held that waiver of sovereign immunity was neither expressed nor consented to in the Business Committee's resolutions that authorized the Chief to sign the employment contracts. The Court affirmed the lower courtâs decision.

The U.S. Department of Energy breached its agreement to accept spent nuclear fuel from nuclear power utilities, including plaintiff, a Wisconsin power cooperative, no longer in operation. Plaintiff maintains 38 metric tons of spent uranium on its property. Had DOE not breached the agreement, the material would have been removed in 2006. Plaintiff joined a consortium of 11 utilities to develop a private repository. The district court awarded about $37.6 million: $16.6 million for maintaining the fuel on-site from 1998 to 2006, $12 million for investment in the consortium, and $6.1 million for various overhead costs associated with mitigation. The Federal Circuit vacated in part. The claims court properly determined that plaintiff was entitled to damages for the entire period, 1999-2006; properly awarded overhead; properly offset the consortium costs; but should have limited the award with respect to the consortium to expenses incurred for mitigation.