DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION: May 15, 2020
CBCA 6806
MAVIGA N.A. INC.,
Appellant,
v.
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,
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.
Donald J. Driscoll, Director and Officer of Maviga N.A. Inc., Spokane, WA, appearing for Appellant.
Azine Farzami, Office of the General Counsel, Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC, counsel for Respondent.
Before Board Judges BEARDSLEY, VERGILIO, and SHERIDAN.
VERGILIO, Board Judge.
Maviga N.A. Inc. (Maviga) has filed an appeal contesting the determination of the Department of Agriculture to award a contract to other than Maviga in response to a solicitation. Maviga acknowledges that, as an unsuccessful bidder, it lacks a contract with the Government regarding this matter. The parties have had an opportunity to comment on jurisdiction.
Maviga is not a contractor under the definition in the Contract Disputes Act, 41 U.S.C. § 7101(7) (2018) (“The term ‘contractor’ means a party to a Federal Government contract other than the Federal Government.”). Jurisdiction is conferred by statute. That jurisdiction does not include authority to resolve this case brought by an unsuccessful bidder, an entity other than a contractor. 41 U.S.C. §§ 7102(a), 7105(e)(1)(b); Coastal Corp. v. United States, 713 F.2d 728 (Fed. Cir. 1983). Neither a contracting officer (by issuing a protest decision that identifies the Board as the forum to hear an appeal of that determination) nor an unsuccessful bidder (by requesting that the Board resolve the dispute) can confer jurisdiction upon this Board.
Decision
The case is DISMISSED FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION.
Joseph A. Vergilio
Board Judge
We concur:
Erica S. Beardsley
Board Judge
Patricia J. Sheridan
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in Maviga N.A. Inc., CBCA 6806. 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.