DISMISSED FOR FAILURE TO PROSECUTE: February 7, 2013
CBCA 2819
KURTIS PARKER,
Appellant,
v.
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION,
Respondent.
Kurtis Parker, pro se, Knoxville, TN.
The case caption as the decision prints it. Every word is kept; the rule the Board draws around it is not text, so it is not repeated here.
Gabriel N. Steinberg, Office of Regional Counsel, General Services Administration, Atlanta, GA, counsel for Respondent.
Before Board Judges DANIELS (Chairman), SOMERS, and STEEL.
DANIELS, Board Judge.
We dismiss this case for failure to prosecute.
Background
Kurtis Parker was the high bidder for a lot of travel trailers offered by the General Services Administration (GSA) through an on-line auction, and the agency awarded a contract to him for the purchase of the trailers. Pursuant to the terms of the auction, a GSA contracting officer cautioned Mr. Parker that he was required to pay for the trailers by January 29, 2009. Mr. Parker did not pay for the trailers by that date, and on February 9, 2009, the contracting officer, again pursuant to the terms of the auction, terminated the contract and assessed liquidated damages in the amount of $1530.40 (20% of the purchase price).
Mr. Parker responded by alleging that he did not bid for the trailers and that someone must have used his identity to do so. The contracting officer urged him to report the identity theft to his local police department and told him that GSA would not take action on its claim for liquidated damages until after it had received the police report.
Mr. Parker did not provide a copy of a police report. Eventually, someone in GSA noticed that the matter had never been resolved. On March 21, 2012, the contracting officer issued a decision asserting a claim for the liquidated damages. Mr. Parker appealed this decision to the Board, stating that he had not made the bid in question and that he “reported the incident to my local police [department] but was told since no charge had been made to my credit card no crime had been committed.”
At a telephonic conference convened by the Board on June 20, 2012, Mr. Parker reiterated his previous statements and also stated that because of concerns about identity theft, around the time of the auction, he had canceled the debit card whose number had been provided to GSA. Agency counsel asked for records corroborating the assertions – particularly the one concerning cancellation of the debit card – both at the conference and in a letter to Mr. Parker in September 2012. Mr. Parker did not provide any documentation or even respond to counsel’s efforts to contact him.
On November 2, 2012, GSA asked the Board to dismiss the appeal for failure to prosecute. On November 5, the Board ordered Mr. Parker to show cause, by November 19, why the appeal should not be so dismissed. Mr. Parker did not respond to the order.
Decision
Because Mr. Parker has neither responded to agency counsel’s reasonable requests nor provided the Board with any reason why the appeal should not be dismissed, the appeal is DISMISSED FOR FAILURE TO PROSECUTE.
_________________________
STEPHEN M. DANIELS
Board Judge
We concur:
JERI KAYLENE SOMERS
Board Judge
CANDIDA S. STEEL
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Kurtis Parker, CBCA 2819. Nothing is summarized or reworded, and the sections run in the order the Board wrote them. What the page shows and the text does not repeat is the pagination furniture: the page numbers and the rules the Board draws around its caption and under its signatures. The signatures are set back into the columns the Board prints them in, each judge under the name he or she signed, and the typed copy of that name the page carries beneath each signature is not repeated.