MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION DENIED: November 9, 2016
CBCA 5232-R
NATIVE AMERICAN CONSTRUCTION SERVICES, LLC,
Appellant,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
Respondent.
John M. Peebles and Ross D. Colburn of Fredericks Peebles & Morgan LLP,
Sacramento, CA, counsel for Appellant.
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.
Paul Sax, Office of the Regional Solicitor, Department of the Interior, Lakewood, CO, counsel for Respondent.
CHADWICK, Board Judge.
Native American Construction Services, LLC (NACS) timely sought reconsideration of our single-judge decision denying its appeal, Native American Construction Services, LLC v. Department of the Interior, CBCA 5232, 16-1 BCA ¶ 36,512. Familiarity with that decision is assumed. We denied relief after an accelerated hearing because NACS presented no evidence from which we could have calculated damages if we had found that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a component of the respondent, Department of the Interior, breached the contract. NACS alleges no error in our decision, but asks us to grant reconsideration under Board Rule 27(a)(6) (48 CFR 6101.27(a)(6) (2016)) solely in order to find a breach, which is important to NACS because it is still performing the contract and wishes to stop doing what it considers uncompensated extra work.
We deny the motion because the request for non-monetary relief is new and inconsistent with the way NACS previously litigated the appeal. Although the claim that NACS submitted to the contracting officer alleged in part that BLM’s imposition of extra work “created an unfunded burden,” NACS sought only an award of damages in its complaint and did not ask for a freestanding finding of breach. NACS then elected the small claims procedure of Rule 52, which is solely for monetary claims. Packer v. Social Security Administration, CBCA 5038, et al., 15-1 BCA ¶ 36,178. In its post-hearing brief, NACS again requested only monetary relief. NACS does not dispute that we properly denied such relief, without interpreting the contract, on finding that NACS offered “no real proof of any damage, i.e., . . . monetary injury as a result of” BLM’s conduct. Assurance Co. v. United States, 813 F.2d 1202, 1205 (Fed. Cir. 1987). As our disposition was correct on the merits and consistent with the procedure NACS chose, we lack grounds to revisit it.
Decision
The motion for reconsideration is DENIED.
__________________________________
KYLE CHADWICK
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Native American Construction Services, LLC, CBCA 5232-R. 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.