DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION: December 20, 2017
CBCA 5927, 5928, 5929
VETERANS CONTRACTING GROUP, INC.,
Appellant,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS,
Respondent.
Paul G. Ryan of Welby, Brady & Greenblatt, LLP, White Plains, NY, 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.
Jennifer L. Hedge, Office of General Counsel, Department of Veterans Affairs, Pittsburgh, PA; and Donald C. Mobly, Office of General Counsel, Department of Veterans Affairs, Denver, CO, counsel for Respondent.
Before Board Judges SHERIDAN, ZISCHKAU, and SULLIVAN.
SULLIVAN, Board Judge.
On November 16, 2017, the Board docketed three appeals from a single contracting officer’s decision on a single claim submitted by appellant, Veterans Contracting Group, Inc. (VCG). These appeals were consolidated for the purposes of submission of the initial pleadings and the appeal file.
In its claim to the contracting officer, VCG sought a final decision on three change proposals, which sought payments of $59,251 (change proposal (CP)-1), $89,179 (CP-2), and $113,483 (CP-3), respectively. Although the sum of the three change proposals was greater than $100,000, VCG’s claim did not appear to be certified. On November 20, 2017, the Board ordered VCG to show cause why its appeals should not be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction. On December 7, 2017, the parties filed a joint stipulation of withdrawal of the appeals to allow VCG to resubmit the claims with appropriate certification.
The Board’s jurisdiction to entertain contract disputes derives from the Contract Disputes Act (CDA), 41 U.S.C. §§ 7101-7109 (2012), which requires as a prerequisite to review by the Board that the contractor, if it is seeking the payment of money from the Government, have submitted a claim to the Government. Id. § 7103. If the amount claimed is greater than $100,000, the CDA further requires that the claim be certified. 41 U.S.C. § 7103(b). “Certification of a claim of more than $100,000 is not only a statutory requirement, but also a jurisdictional prerequisite for review of a contracting officer’s decision before this Board.” B&M Cillessen Construction Co. v. Department of Health & Human Services, CBCA 931, 08-1 BCA ¶ 33,753, at 167,084 (2007). “The submission of an uncertified claim, for purposes of the CDA, is, in effect, a legal nullity . . . .” Fidelity Construction Co. v. United States, 700 F.2d 1379, 1384 (Fed. Cir. 1983). “Although a defective certification may be corrected, a failure to certify may not.” B&M Cillessen, 08-1 BCA at 167,084 (quoting K Satellite v. Department of Agriculture, CBCA 14, 07-1 BCA ¶ 33,547, at 166,154).
Decision
The appeals are DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION.
MARIAN E. SULLIVAN
Board Judge
We concur:
PATRICIA J. SHERIDAN
Board Judge
JONATHAN D. ZISCHKAU
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Veterans Contracting Group, Inc., CBCA 5927, 5928, 5929. 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.