MOTION TO COMPEL DENIED: August 13, 2020
CBCA 6809
S & DF PROPERTIES, LLC,
Appellant,
v.
GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION,
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.
Steve Forti, Managing Member of S & DF Properties, LLC, El Paso, TX, appearing for Appellant.
Jay Bernstein, Office of General Counsel, General Services Administration, Washington, DC, counsel for Respondent.
Before Board Judges BEARDSLEY, HYATT, and ZISCHKAU.
BEARDSLEY, Board Judge.
Appellant has moved to compel alternative dispute resolution (ADR) pursuant to Civilian Board of Contract Appeals (CBCA) Rules 8 and 54 (48 CFR 6101.8, .54 (2019)). The Government, however, is unwilling to participate in ADR in this appeal and argues that it cannot be compelled to participate. The Government also asserts that ADR is counterproductive when forced on unwilling participants. See In re African American Slave Descendants’ Litigation, 272 F. Supp. 2d 755, 759 (N.D. Ill. 2003) (citing In re Atlantic Pipe Corp., 304 F.3d 135, 143 (1st Cir. 2002)). We agree with the Government.
Participation in ADR at the CBCA is voluntary. CBCA Rule 54 requires the parties to jointly request ADR and to agree on an ADR method and procedures. The Government has not agreed to request or participate in ADR. While the CBCA makes ADR available to the parties as an alternative to litigation and often encourages the parties to resolve disputes using ADR, the Board will not, and has no authority to, compel the Government to participate in ADR.
Decision
The motion to compel ADR is DENIED.
Erica S. Beardsley
Board Judge
We concur:
Catherine B. Hyatt
Board Judge
Jonathan D. Zischkau
Board Judge
This is a verbatim capture of the text layer of the Board's own document in S & DF Properties, LLC, CBCA 6809. 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.