DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE: October 22, 2014
CBCA 2943
ENVIRONMENTAL SAFETY CONSULTANTS, INC.,
Appellant,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Respondent.
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.
Peter C. Nwogu, President of Environmental Safety Consultants, Inc., Stone Mountain, GA, appearing for Appellant.
Charles B. Wallace and Sara T. Zaffina, Office of the Solicitor, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC, counsel for Respondent.
Before Board Judges STERN, McCANN, and KULLBERG.
STERN, Board Judge.
Order
This appeal arises from a contract between the Department of the Interior, National Park Service (Interior) and appellant, Environmental Safety Consultants, Inc. (ESCI), entered into on September 25, 1995. The complicated history of this matter need not be discussed since appellant has moved to dismiss the appeal. Appellant bases its request for dismissal on a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Court of Appeals). Appellant states that the basis for its action before the Board, a challenge to an alleged Government setoff claim against amounts the Government owes appellant, no longer exists, since the Court of Appeals has dismissed the Government’s claim. Appellant states that, based on this decision, it has no evidence to support the gravamen of its appeal. Appellant requests that the dismissal be without prejudice, “in the event the Government will attempt to cook up another bogus setoff claims [sic] in the near future . . . .”
Interior opposes ESCI’s motion to dismiss the appeal without prejudice and argues that the dismissal be with prejudice, given the history of the appeal and the resources expended by respondent in defending the claim. Respondent urges the Board, in the alternative, to grant respondent’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject matter jurisdiction previously filed by Interior. The Board finds that, given appellant’s motion and the Board disposition, as stated herein, addressing Interior’s motion is unnecessary at this juncture. Since the appellant concedes that there is no longer a basis for its claim presently before the Board, it is appropriate to dismiss the claim with prejudice. The Board will address the merits of any future appeal if such an appeal is filed.
Accordingly, the appeal is DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE.
_________________________________
JAMES L. STERN
Board Judge
We concur:
R. ANTHONY McCANN
Board Judge
H. CHUCK KULLBERG
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Environmental Safety Consultants, Inc, CBCA 2943. 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.