Courts watch:

SDVOSB, bonding cases

      Two recent legal decisions are likely to impact some small business federal contractors.

      The decisions are:

• In a Nov. 20 ruling by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the court declared moot the lawsuit brought by Veterans Contracting Group LLC.The contractor had challenged the Small Business Administration’s decision that it was ineligible as a service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB). It also challenged the Veterans Affairs Dept.’s removal of the firm from its SDVOSB database.

      The court said the case was moot because new SDVOSB regulations went into effect Oct. 1 that basically swept away previous legal precedents. The new regulations made the SBA and VA regulations for SDVOSBs uniform.

      The decision may impact other SDVOSB cases. “SDVOSBs need to review their compliance to ensure they are not relying on outdated regulations and case law, as the Federal Circuit's notes have been effectively overturned,” according to an analysis by Holland & Knight LLP.

• In K-Con, Inc. v. Secretary of the Army, the same court recently applied the so-called Christian doctrine to support construction bonding requirements in an Army contract even though those bonding requirements were not in the contract.

      The contractor had protested the bonding requirements because they weren’t written in the contract. But under the Christian doctrine, some contracting terms are mandatory, whether or not they are written in contracts.

      The decision is “a useful reminder that you may have contract requirements that don’t actually appear anywhere in your contract,” wrote Morrison Foerster attorneys in an analysis.

More information: Holland & Knight analysis: https://bit.ly/2PQMpxZ
Morrison Foerster analysis: https://bit.ly/2DWaM6K

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