dispositive of the case and that is is there any obligation on the part of the government with respect to exercising options if it's an  yes so the and and i was going to get a standard first but i'll address your question your honor where the the board went awry is when it found that there were reasons to justify why the option was an exercise the reasons that the judge cited to were all after the fact rationales created by someone who wasn't involved in the decision making process at a time when counsel for the and r c was involved the evidence is undisputed and i think on indisputable that there was one and only one person who was responsible for reviewing the contract that was has different language than what we're dealing with here and that case it says at the option of the government which this court held was a you know wider all right that cannot breach no matter of what the reasons or lack of reasons are for united states court of federal claims decision dealing with options and in that case there was a one year based contract and four year or four one year options and in  contract was terminated for convenience but the government in that case took the position that there was no way they could be liable because with respect to options the defendants argue that the government was not obligated to exercise any of the options in d you the answer to my question as that you would say the standard is that you would have to show the disposition through a grant the extension the option was bad say deliver they chose not to exercise the option right now is that our future because in order to have an abuse of discretion standard and all the cases we cite in our brief your honor addressed this point there has to be reasons for why the option was an exercise that because otherwise you abuse your discretion to go see the threshold issue when you're dealing with any discretionary right in the cases from from i tell my kids eat green beans or li reasons for doing so there's neither a case that goes one way or the other specifically dealing with options but terminations for convenience or honor which also don't think of terminating a contract this is not to me a contract it and that's why those cases exist like what the government says you know i don't think we can look i'm going to give this contract only to people that look different you know those sorts of things are likely time out government's got to exercise fair dealing that's totally out of bounds but an option is whether they want to extend it or not i don't see how they don't have an fettered discretion to decide what to do it so long as they don't do something illegal in the process something completely bad faith so would be a complete abuse of discretion but simply not telling you why they choose to exercise an option i don't see how that could ever be august this is a little different ron a because the woman who is responsible for making the recommendation who's recommendation would have been accepted by the contracting officer to mount guard that is undisputed testified she would have exercised the option actually known it was your job to do so how can it not be an abuse of discretion and an arbitrary decision if it's made i raise my hand it's my job i'm supposed to review it even the other contracting officer wasn't involved mismo long testified it was this woman's job and she should have done review as part of her job but she didn't know it was her job should not it was her job on the first option which she recommended that the option to exercise it was done but she didn't know it was her job this time so as that that's the judge kept saying during the hearing someone was asleep in the white house yet no one knows her job i  if you had done your job if you had done your job we're not asking for the government to do some ink some crazy unbelievable jumping over hurdles we're just asking for the person who's responsible for doing the review to actually do the  protests and in terminations for convenience in every single case where there's any type of discretionary decision and this is a discretionary decision are you views in your discretion every single one of those examples your honor would a discretionary determination there actually has to be some reason to justify the decision and in this case there was no reason because the evidence is on disputed that if miss jamison had done her job she would have recommended that the option be exercised and we wouldn't be here because the contrary view that they govern with has to articulate its reason it just not it doesn't it just has to have a reason it can beat any reason that's reasonable words are correct when you're making a discretionary terminations discretion in order to not abuse that discretion well you need this to a sit down discuss it and have a reason why you did what you did if you don't communicate to the contractor that's they did a review and said at the time you know what attenuation you didn't do x y or z correctly or we want to go in a different direction or anything anything well  the contract with articulate what the standards are that's what the party said agreed to and the absence of standards is judge still started the arguing with she pointed out that the contract says the only obligation on the government is you have to give held that when you have a discretionary cost whether it's been a protest picture meant to mission convenience or in digital tax an option that you have to act basically in good faith that you have to not have abused her discretion when you make a determination and i guess i was i took offense and i may be the wrong word to making a for of all started because i don't think in my career i've done that and i think in this case the standard if applied and there's an abuse of discretion standard when the evidence is on the spirited that the auction would have been exercised had the government not made a mistake that that's an arbitrary decision because it was only due to a mistake that my client didn't have the benefit of work during that final option  lisa court attenuation has no contractual right to exercise an option well there there were no standards whatsoever that faith what not and not written into the contract you are contract law being not written into the contract but are you saying that if the government acted in bad faith and said i don't like white people so i'm not renewing your contract i'm not going to exercise this option that they couldn't bring a cause of action under those circumstances is no bad face in this case so i don't think the court needs to address what would if we're talking about bad face meaning and i'm essentially i don't think the court needs to address if you have a government agent making deciding not to exercise an option out of it and that's whether that would be legal or not or whether that would be actionable the implied duty of good faith that relates to existing contractual that under the implied duty of good face and fair dealing with the government cannot interfere with the parties performance of the contract or its existing contractual rights but they have no contractual right to an option to have an option  follow orse or obligates the government to exercise an option in certain circumstances but this contract doesn't do that under the language of this contract attenuation is no more right to receive an option than a person on the street has a right to receive a government contract so there's no statutory right to have an option exercised the regulations governing exercise of an option those only relate to the affirmative exercise and are not for the benefit of the contractor in any of that so there are there is no there is no right for them  to sue for the non exercise of an option the contract forwards the civilian board agree with you did they not apply some standard use of discretion arbitrary that's that's the standard that the the board applied you're on be whatever the contract says is the contract does not set forward any standards for the government to not exercise an option and that should be the end of the story if the government does not exercise the option there are  contract does have standards governing the affirmative exercise that the government has to give a notice prior to exercising it now that your friend cited the quota claims case right and that use in some cases they'll use a standard of a bad face say in the absence of bad faith the government has discretion complete discretion to not exercise an option any really extensive analysis of it i think government systems advisors as a controlling precedent  the base contract wanted to exercise the option her testimony of most is she the woman that your friend said didn't know that she she was asked is it still true from what you testified to in your deposition that you had no substantive role in making a recommendation or decision on whether to exercise a second option yes or no the the board judge that so long as they put together the package properly and whatever they review the package but i mean if the technical people are recommending that they exercise the option then as a contract specialist she will go along with that and she answered absolutely correct so she's as long as the card she's testified essentially that if the contract officers record the contract officers are representative ask her to exercise  option and has put together the package which is their internal process for making sure that the requirements under the federal acquisition regulations for the affirmative exercise have been met she would review that package and assuming that those requirements are met then she would she would go on with that recommendation but it doesn't mean that she automatically will exercise the option without the the contract officers representative requesting it demonstrating that it's it's appropriate to do so under the regulations so you know if it's there  are regulations we're not satisfied and ms g m or send the contracting officers representative was begging to exercise the option i don't think the contracting officer could or would  seventy five with a record i didn't have a preference and then she was asked would you have recommended continuing to work with attenuation given the fact that attenuation the existing contractor for which you had no issues and she answered i would have recommended it but i was and asked for a recommendation so i i think what she means there's she didn't personally have a preference but if if somebody had gone to her and said we want to exercise the option but we need your recommendation she would have been willing to go along with that because she didn't herself have a preference one way or the other but she was not advocating for her minute exercise and she was one of several people there who were discussing whether it made sense in considering the issues at the time at the age for seventy five of the record there's an e mail that she wrote this stream or some wrote on september sixteenth it was thirteen days before the option expired she wrote in part i guess i we need to discuss internally with libya whether it would be beneficial to exercise the option given all of the issues we've had with task ordered wine and the and uncertainty of timing of work parentheses i guess that's a good way to put it and then there's a smiley face close parentheses for task orders two and three so that's just one example of several different government of government officials that are discussing internally whether it made sense to exercise  so the notion that this is entirely after the fact rationales for not exercising it i think is not supported there's clearly they were discussing it at the time before some of those other just to go over very briefly some of those reasons some of those reasons for the with the board the way the board put it was lack of motivation that it what nobody  head that's what you keep reading to us i don't know you obviously think that this is a significant point used a lot of time and it all saying is i don't know if that's really a relevant consideration for this solution the case and nor do i think it's what the lower court decided what was in her head and what she was necessarily done one way or the other and i don't even know where your going is and seems you know you want us to make some sort of fact findings in the first instance which is really weird considering the chief judge has tried to guide you at several times it it shouldn't be relevant other than this is these are the facts of the board relied on under the the standard that the board applied we think that standards and correct the state of the contract i just want to bring to the court's attention a few additional decisions i think support the proper standard and one which was cited by the government t m i men in your briefs this was cited on page five the actual holding and that case was that there were knew all of this contract is within the broad but not unlimited discretion of the government that dealt with options and in that case th claims are obviously not binding but aware of presumably it were of this court precedent held that the government's renewal of the contract was proper because it was within the broad but not unlimited discretion of the government and that's the same standard we're asking this court to apply here that the government's discretion is broad but it's not unlimited another case which is another court of federal claims decision in the enterprise global of the united states and that's one twenty federal claims one sixty five that dealt with fourteen different task orders all of that was the government's only obligation was to provide the minimum task force which for fourteen and the contractor allege that it was  entitled to remedies because the government terminated that contract and the government argued we have no obligations beyond these fourteen and the court held that implied duty of good faith and fair dealing cover that if the standard a pos and it's the standard that the lower court heard or that the board applied that there's a four part test whenever you have a discretionary determination which comes from decisions time and again from the score that applies that the arbitrary thank you thank you