The Washington Supreme Court recently ruled in NOVA Contracting, Inc. v. City of Olympia that WSDOT Standard Specification 1-4.05 makes no exception to the written notice requirements for claims for expectancy and consequential damages. NOVA entered a contract with the City to replace a deteriorating culvert.  The Contract contained a “notice of protest” provision…

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2018 issue of Construction Law, the newsletter of the WSBA Construction Law Section. In Afoa v. Port of Seattle (Afoa II), 421 P.3d 903, 2018 WL 3469072 (2018), the Washington Supreme Court considered whether the Port of Seattle was vicariously liable for breaches of a nondelegable duty…

Federal agencies are increasing civil monetary penalties for the violation of numerous federal laws for the first time since the 1990’s.[1] Of particular concern to government contractors are recent interim final rule changes issued by the U.S. Departments of Justice (“DOJ”) and Labor (“DOL”) that have increased the maximum penalties for violation of the False…

While many corporations in the federal contracting arena have been expecting regulations to further limit Federal False Claims Act (FCA) liability, those expectations have been called into question by a new federal regulation released last week aimed at doubling False Claims Act penalties. Raised by the obscure Railroad Retirement Board, which infrequently generates FCA…

In an en banc decision filed July 7, 2015, the Ninth Circuit reversed the district court’s original dismissal of consolidated qui tam suits brought by whistleblowers, alleging that their former employer, Kinetic Concepts, Inc., had fraudulently claimed reimbursements from Medicare. See US ex rel. Hartpence v. Kinetic Concepts, Inc. (12-55396) and US ex rel. Godecke v. Kinetic Concepts…

The auditors for the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) received additional guidance from DCAA further defining and focusing on the identification of expressly unallowable costs and the recovery of penalties for those unallowable costs. Federal contractors should consider this guidance carefully; what the DCAA instructs its auditors regarding unallowable costs will directly impact contractors…