Opinion ID: 2305399
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: bid without agreeing to wage scale

Text: The final claim is that of the appellant, The Roland Electrical Company (Roland), based upon the City's refusal to enter into or go through with a contract for the wiring of a school. In brief, the essential facts with regard to this claim are that the City asked for bids on the project by a form of invitation which referred to Ordinance No. 225 and contained a clause stating that The following is a schedule of minimum hourly wage rates,    to be paid to all classes of laborers, workmen or mechanics needed on the project to execute this contract:   . Then followed the three classifications and the wage rates applicable under each. Roland stated in its proposal sheet that it did not pay what is known as prevailing wages. There is some controversy as to whether the wage rates specified under classification 1 were (as the City contends) or were not (as Roland Electrical Company contends) properly applicable to this project under the Board of Estimates' resolution with regard to what classification 1 covered. We think that this is immaterial. Bids were asked for on the basis of at least one or the other of classifications 1 and 2 and the respective wage scales thereunder, but Roland put in a bid in which it refused to be bound by any prevailing wage scale. The City, on opening the bids, failed to notice this exception and notified Roland of the acceptance of its bid. Soon afterwards the City learned of its error and refused to sign a contract to which Roland attached a clause denying the applicability of the wage scale. Whether classification 1 or classification 2 was the proper one to apply to this work, the reservation put into its bid by Roland would seem as applicable to one scale as to the other. Each was included in the request for bids. The fact that Roland's own wage scale for electricians happened to accord with the City's scale under classification 2 was something of which Roland was doubtless aware, but it seems quite inconsistent for Roland to urge, in effect, in one breath that it is not bound by any City wage scale at all and in the next that since it complies with the wage scale contained in one of the City classifications, there is a binding contract based on that scale. If Roland had written on its bid We consider classification 2 applicable to wages to be paid on this job instead of saying We do not pay what is known as the Prevailing Rate of Wages, we might have quite a different situation. Here the Ordinance required that a contract for a job such as this one contain an agreement on the part of the contractor to pay not less than the minimum hourly wage rate fixed by the Board of Estimates, and Roland was well aware of that requirement. That wage rate, under Section 2 of the Ordinance, was to be not less than the general hourly wage rate prevailing in the locality, and Roland was well aware of that. It is hardly to be supposed that the City would be bound by a contract directly contra to the requirements of an ordinance under which it purported to act. See Gontrum v. City of Baltimore, 182 Md. 370, 35 A.2d 128, and cases therein cited. Consequently, even if Roland is correct in its claim based upon American Lighting Co. v. McCuen, 92 Md. 703, 48 A. 352, that an agreement resulted (which we do not think it necessary to decide), the City would not be bound thereby. See also Hanna v. Board of Education of Wicomico County, 200 Md. 49, 87 A.2d 846. In accordance with the views above expressed, the decrees appealed from will be affirmed. Decrees affirmed, with costs.