DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION: December 6, 2017
CBCA 5898
COOVERCLARK & ASSOCIATES,
Appellant,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR,
Respondent.
Jon Taylor Benson of Benson Law Office, Colorado Springs, CO, counsel for
Appellant.
Dennis Adelson and Savannah L. Wilson, Office of the Solicitor, Department of
Labor, Washington, DC, counsel for 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.
Before Board Judges SOMERS (Chair), BEARDSLEY, and RUSSELL.
SOMERS, Board Judge.
Appellant, Cooverclark & Associates (Cooverclark), submitted a request for an equitable adjustment (REA) to the contracting officer. Cooverclark appealed the contracting officer’s final decision. After issuing her final decision, the contracting officer informed Cooverclark in response to its request to continue joint discussions that “the Government is willing to meet with your firm to further discuss the REA.” Subsequently, the contracting officer formally rescinded her decision. The parties have jointly requested that the appeal be dismissed without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction.
The Contract Disputes Act provides that all claims relating to government contracts shall be the subject of decisions by contracting officers. 41 U.S.C. § 7104(a) (2012). In the absence of a contracting officer’s final decision or the passage of time leading to a deemed denial, we do not possess jurisdiction over the appeal. See, e.g., Olympus America Inc. v. Department of Veterans Affairs, CBCA 5594, 2017 WL 214386 (Jam. 17, 2017); American Business Corp. v. Department of Labor, CBCA 637, 07-1 BCA ¶ 33,524 (citing Monster Government Solutions, Inc. v. Department of Homeland Security, DOTBCA 4532, 06-1 BCA ¶ 33,236, aff’d on reconsideration, 06-2 BCA ¶ 33,312 (citations omitted)).
Decision
The appeal is DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION.
JERI K. SOMERS
Board Judge
We concur:
ERICA S. BEARDSLEY
Board Judge
BEVERLY M. RUSSELL
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Cooverclark & Associates, CBCA 5898. 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.