ARMED SERVICES BOARD OF CONTRACT APPEALS 

Appeal of -- ) 

) 

Supply & Service Team GmbH ) 

) 

Under Contract No. W912PB-06-D-001 l ) 

APPEARANCE FOR THE APPELLANT: 

APPEARANCES FOR THE GOVERNMENT: 

ASBCA No. 59630 

Paul D. Reinsdorf, Esq. 

Frankfurt/Main Germany 

Raymond M. Saunders, Esq. 

Army Chief Trial Attorney 

CPT Jessica E. Hom, JA 

Trial Attorney 

OPINION BY ADMINISTRATIVE JUDGE PROUTY 

ON THE GOVERNMENT'S MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION 

Before the Board is the government's timely motion for reconsideration of our 

earlier entry of summary judgment sustaining appellant, Supply & Service Team 

GmbH's (SST's), appeal. Supply & Service Team GmbH, ASBCA No. 59630, 17-1 

BCA, 36,678. We deny the motion. 

In a motion for reconsideration, the moving party has the burden of 

"demonstrat[ing] a compelling reason for the Board to modify its decision." 

ADTConstruction Group, Inc., ASBCA No. 55358, 14-1BCA,35,508 at 174,041 

(citations omitted). In particular, it must provide newly discovered evidence or 

demonstrate mistakes in the original decision's findings of fact or conclusions of law. 

Id. A motion for reconsideration is not the place to present arguments previously 

made and rejected. "[W]here litigants have once battled for the court's decision, they 

should neither be required, nor without good reason permitted, to battle for it again. 

Motions for reconsideration do not afford litigants the opportunity to take a 'second 

bite at the apple' or to advance arguments that properly should have been presented 

in an earlier proceeding." Dixon v. Shinseki, 741F.3d1367, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2014) 

(citations omitted); see also Avant Assessment, LLC, ASBCA No. 58867, 15-1 

BCA, 36,137 at 176,383. 

Here, the government's motion for reconsideration rests completely on an 

argument that it only presented, in passing, in response to our order directing briefing 

on legal issues involving accord and satisfaction and fraud as a defense. The 

government's new, substantial elaboration on this argument was not before us when 

we made our decision, nor is it persuasive, in any event. 
We granted SST's motion for summary judgment on the basis that a particular 

modification (referred to as Mod 4 in our decision) to the contract at issue effectively 

acted as an accord and satisfaction of the dispute that was the basis of this appeal. 

The government's argument in its motion for reconsideration is that two subsequent 

bilateral contract modifications de-obligating funds from delivery orders on the 

contract (the de-obligation modifications) acted to set aside the government's 

waiver of its rights in Mod 4. We made short work of the abbreviated form of this 

argument originally presented by the government because a contractor's agreement to 

de-obligate funds, without more, does not constitute a waiver or its rights and because 

the de-obligation modifications were not supported by any consideration. The 

government's new challenges to those bases are unavailing. 

First, the government argues that we erred by limiting our consideration of the 

effect of the de-obligation modifications to the four comers of their texts.* This 

argument is unpersuasive, to say the least. It is well established (and noted in cases 

cited by both our original decision and the government's motion for reconsideration) 

that (with exceptions not applicable here) we do not stray from the text of the contract 

when interpreting it if there is no identifiable ambiguity in its terms requiring a resort 

to extrinsic evidence. See, e.g., TEG-Paradigm Environmental, Inc. v. United States, 

465 F.3d 1329, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2006); McAbee Construction, Inc. v. United States, 

97 F.3d 1431, 1434 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (citing numerous cases); Automotive Management 

Services FZE, ASBCA No. 58352, 15-1 BCA ~ 36, 119 at 176,329; Stewart Avionics, 

Inc., ASBCA No. 10226, 65-2 BCA ~ 5111at24,070 (necessary to go beyond the four 

comers of the contract because the meaning of the contract term is unclear). The cases 

cited by the government, when properly read, hew to this black letter law. Inasmuch 

as the government has identified no ambiguities in the de-obligation modifications, we 

discern no legal error in confining our interpretation of them to the four comers of 

their respective texts. 

The government's argument that the de-obligation modifications were 

supported by consideration, contrary to our findings, is similarly unsupported. The 

government's assertion is that, by agreeing to de-obligate the funds, SST both waived 

its right to payment for those funds and obtained the right to file future claims on the 

contract that were otherwise barred by Mod 4. This argument is in radical 

contravention to the government's earlier position in this appeal, that there was no 

accord and satisfaction in Mod 4, and finds no support, whatsoever, in the record: 

under no conceivable reading of the de-obligatio,n modifications (even if they were 

ambiguous, which they are not), could they be read to resurrect SST's rights to 

advance claims that it waived by executing Mod 4. We can only imagine the 

government's protests if we had ruled that a de-obligation modification, sub silentio, 

*Notably, the government is implicitly conceding that, under the four comers of the 

text of the de-obligation modifications, it cannot prevail. 

2 
permitted a contractor to pursue claims against the government that it had previously 

waived - yet that is exactly what it requests here. 

We have carefully reviewed the remainder of the government's motion and 

find no other basis to revise our earlier opinion in this appeal. Thus, for the reasons 

stated herein, we deny the government's request for reconsideration of our decision 

sustaining ASBCA No. 59630. 

Dated: 3 May 2017 

I concur 

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N. STEMPLER 

Administrative Judge 

Acting Chairman 

Armed Services Board 

of Contract Appeals 

f.IDPROUTY 

Administrative Judge 

Armed Services Board 

of Contract Appeals 

I concur 

RICHARD ~ SHACKLEFORD 

Administrative Judge 

Vice Chairman 

Armed Services Board 

of Contract Appeals 

I certify that the foregoing is a true copy of the Opinion and Decision of the 

Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals in ASBCA No. 59630, Appeal of Supply 

& Service Team GmbH, rendered in conformance with the Board's Charter. 

Dated: 

3 

JEFFREY D. GARDIN 

Recorder, Armed Services 

Board of Contract Appeals