Comptroller General

United States Government Accountability Office 

Washington, DC 20548 

of the United States

Decision 

Matter of: Coronet Machinery Corporation--Costs 

File: B-400197.2 

Date: November 18, 2008 

Alani Golanski, Esq., Law Offices of Alani Golanski, for the protester. 

Maj. Walter R. Dukes, U.S. Army Materiel Command, for the agency. 

Paula A. Williams, Esq., and Ralph O. White, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, 

GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. 

DIGEST 

Request for reimbursement of protest costs is denied where record fails to establish 

that the agency delayed taking corrective action in the face of a clearly meritorious 

protest. 

DECISION 

Coronet Machinery Corporation, of Yonkers, New York, requests that we 

recommend that the firm be reimbursed the costs of filing and pursuing a protest 

challenging the exclusion of its proposal from the competitive range under request 

for proposals No. W15QKN-08-R-1329, issued by the Department of the Army for a 

quantity of shock attenuating lifting plugs and gaskets to be used on military 

projectiles. We dismissed the protest as academic on June 23, 2008, before receipt of 

the agency report, and after the agency advised our Office that it was taking 

corrective action in the procurement and restoring Coronet’s proposal to the 

competitive range. 

We deny the request.1

 

1

 Coronet requests reimbursement of its costs pursuant to the Equal Access to 

Justice Act, 5 U.S.C. § 504 (1982); however, there is no legal basis that would permit 

recovery of protest costs under this statute. J.C. Yamas Co., B-211105.2, Jan. 19, 

1984, 84-1 CPD ¶ 81. We therefore limit our discussion to the reimbursement of 

protest costs under the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, 31 U.S.C. 

§ 3554(c)(1) (2000), as implemented by our Bid Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R. 

§ 21.8(e) (2008). 
Our Office may recommend that a protester be reimbursed the costs of filing and 

pursuing a protest where the contracting agency takes action which renders a 

protest academic prior to our issuing a protest resolving the merits of the protest. 

Bid Protest Regulations, 4 C.F.R. § 21.8(e); Information Ventures, Inc.--Costs, 

B-294567.2, Nov. 16, 2004, 2004 CPD ¶ 234 at 2. Such a recommendation is generally 

based upon a concern that an agency has taken longer than necessary to initiate 

corrective action in the face of a clearly meritorious protest, thereby causing the 

protester to expend unnecessary time and resources to make further use of the 

protest process in order to obtain relief. Advanced Envtl. Solutions, Inc.--Costs, 

B-296136.2, June 20, 2005, 2005 CPD ¶ 121 at 2-3. As a general rule, when an agency 

takes corrective action on or before the due date for its report in response to the 

protest, we consider the agency’s actions to have been taken promptly; a protester 

does not have to file comments or pursue the protest further when the corrective 

action is taken prior to the submission of a report on the merits of the protest. See

Alaska Structures, Inc.--Costs, B-298156.2, July 17, 2006, 2006 CPD ¶ 109 at 4. 

In our view, a basis for the award of costs does not exist in this protest, since the 

Army initiated corrective action on June 18, 10 days prior to the June 28 report due 

date which, as mentioned above, is the point at which we will generally determine 

that an agency has not acted promptly. Since the agency’s corrective action has not 

been shown to have been unduly delayed, and since we do not recommend the 

award of protest costs under the Equal Access to Justice Act, there is no basis to

recommend reimbursement of protest costs.

Accordingly, the request for reimbursement of costs is denied. 

Gary L. Kepplinger 

General Counsel 

Page 2 B-400197.2