United States Court of Federal Claims

There was a comment period that ended earlier this month, and what industry and legal experts are saying is that this is the time to address this issue.

It would have been better if it was addressed earlier, but this is the chance because there are a lot more protest actions at the Government Accountability Office and the Court of Federal Claims, so this needs to be addressed.

There was recently a case where the Army's use of AI in a contract award was protested.

What's the latest on that case?

The Army didn't explain how the weakness occurred.

And Tracks said it looked like a classic AI hallucination because GAO never delved into that.

So Tracks filed a lawsuit with the Court of Federal Claims.

The allegation was the Army failed to validate the conclusions they reached.

With respect to breach of contract, however, what we've got is the language of the Tucker Act.

I'll talk in a minute about how the language of 106 I think sort of reinforces this, but the Tucker Act says, quote, the United States Court of Federal Claims shall have jurisdiction to render judgment upon any claim against the united states founded either upon the constitution or any act of congress or any regulation of the executive department or upon any express or implied contract with the united states for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort period full stop um so that's 28 usd section 491 a1 So by its terms, if we were just reading that language in a vacuum, just like as a matter of English, I think one would say that that waiver applies only in actions brought in the Court of Federal Claims.

Now, what's confusing here is that the Federal Circuit has said at least there's language in the Federal Circuit's opinion in quality tooling that says the opposite.

and that it suggests that the waiver in the Tucker Act applies in any lawsuit in a court that otherwise has competent jurisdiction over the action.

Now, in fairness to the debtor, when I raised this question with counsel for the United States earlier on, what counsel told me, consistent with what the Federal Circuit says in quality tooling, is that there's concurrent jurisdiction in this court and the Court of Federal Claims.

The government's more recent papers take the opposite position.

In fairness and sort of consistent with my opening observations, there's no reason why Council would have expected that issue to have arisen back when I asked the question.

And so I think it's only fair to permit the government to have the chance to protect its interest, having now given the matter more complete consideration.

So I don't think there's a serious sovereign immunity argument with respect to turnover.

With respect to breach of contract, however, what we've got is the language of the Tucker Act I'll talk in a minute about how the language of 106 I think sort of reinforces this, but the Tucker Act says, quote, the United States Court of Federal Claims shall have jurisdiction to render judgment upon any claim against the United States, founded either upon the Constitution or any act of Congress or any regulation of an executive department, or upon any express or implied contract with the United States for liquidated or unliquidated damages in cases not sounding in tort.

Period.

Full stop.

So that's 28 U.S.A.

Section 491 .

So by its terms, if we were just reading that language in a vacuum, just like as a matter of English, I think one would say that that waiver applies only in actions brought in the Court of Federal Claims.

Now,

Federal News Network's Jason Miller tells us more.

BL Harvard International has filed suit in the Court of Federal Claims to recover more than $450 million from the State Department in unpaid construction costs.

The Birmingham, Alabama company says despite repeated attempts, state has failed to pay it for 12 embassy and consulate projects in places like Mexico, Guatemala, Turkey, and Thailand.

In its lawsuit, B.L. Harbert says the government has now taken possession of each of those projects and has been actively utilizing some of them for more than three years without paying the extra costs it incurred.