Opinion ID: 1059162
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: UOSA's Application for Costs

Text: Code § 2.2-4335(C) provides protection to a public body for delay claims made by contractors which are false or without factual or legal basis. The mechanism chosen by the General Assembly is the in terrorem effect of recovering litigation costs from the contractor which are attributable to a frivolous delay claim. The statute provides in pertinent part: A contractor making a claim against a public body for costs or damages due to the alleged delaying of the contractor in the performance of its work under any public construction contract shall be liable to the public body and shall pay it for a percentage of all costs incurred by the public body in investigating, analyzing, negotiating, litigating and arbitrating the claim, which percentage shall be equal to the percentage of the contractor's total delay claim that is determined through litigation or arbitration to be false or to have no basis in law or in fact. Code § 2.2-4335(C) (emphasis added). The trial court denied UOSA's application for costs under the statute finding insufficient evidence of a determination within the meaning of the statute or to show that the delay claims had no basis in law or fact. For the following reasons, we will affirm the judgment of the trial court. UOSA contends that the Joint Venture's claim for material breach damages of $63,000,000 was, in actuality, a claim for delay damages. The Joint Venture responds that its damages lay in quantum meruit and thus its claim was not one for delay damages. UOSA argues the material breach claim was really a delay damages claim that was effectively stipulated out of the case through the October 24th order and verified by Judge Finch's later bench ruling. UOSA reasons that the continued litigation of the material breach claim by the Joint Venture thereafter was essentially a de facto determination under the statute that the material breach claim was a false act not based on law or fact. UOSA thus concludes it is entitled to a percentage of its litigation costs incurred in opposing the material breach claim. [5] However, UOSA's argument runs into an immediate roadblock. Nothing in the October 24th order addresses the material breach claim as set out in Law #193766. More importantly, UOSA cannot avoid the unmistakable clarity of the record which contains the uncontradicted, succeeding and specific February 8th order finding material breach damages were in the consolidated cases to be tried. As we noted in Hill v. Hill, 227 Va. 569, 578, 318 S.E.2d 292, 297 (1984), it is fundamental that a court of record speaks only through its written orders. UOSA has not assigned error to the February 8th order which specifically denied UOSA's motion to strike material breach damages. Accordingly, the February 8th order is the law of the case. See Searles v. Gordon's, 156 Va. 289, 294-96, 157 S.E. 759, 761 (1931). As in Hill, no order appears in the record to modify or vacate the February 8th order. For whatever purpose Judge Finch may have remarked on material breach damages from the bench on May 23, 2002, those remarks do not change the law of the case and the binding effect of the February 8th order. Hill, 227 Va. at 578, 318 S.E.2d. at 297. It strains credulity that UOSA would ask the trial court to clarify that it had already ruled the material breach claim was stipulated out of the case over three months earlier in the October 24th order, but not make that argument to the court at the February 8th hearing or in its written motion. That invitation, if extended outside the record, was unequivocally rejected by the trial judge through the plain and unmistakable language of the February 8th order. The law of the case thus directs the finding that material breach damages were very much in the consolidated cases until the filing of the May 29, 2002, nonsuit. Accordingly, UOSA's argument that the material breach claim was out of the case fails. There is thus no evidence in the record of a false or statutorily baseless delay damages claim upon which UOSA can anchor its application for statutory costs. The trial court's judgment denying UOSA's cost application was therefore correct.