Court Opinion

ID: 9637299
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:02:38.658639+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:41.334571
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-1368     Document: 47    Page: 1    Filed: 08/22/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                   ______________________

   ECC INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTORS, LLC,
                 Appellant

                             v.

                SECRETARY OF THE ARMY,
                          Appellee
                   ______________________

                         2022-1368
                   ______________________

     Appeal from the Armed Services Board of Contract Ap-
 peals in No. 59643, Administrative Judge Owen C. Wilson,
 Administrative Judge Richard Shackleford, Administra-
 tive Judge Timothy Paul McIlmail.
                  ______________________

                  Decided: August 22, 2023
                   ______________________

     ROY DALE HOLMES, Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall &
 Furman, Philadelphia, PA, argued for appellant. Also rep-
 resented by MICHAEL H. PAYNE.

     CORINNE ANNE NIOSI, Commercial Litigation Branch,
 Civil Division, United States Department of Justice, Wash-
 ington, DC, argued for appellee. Also represented by BRIAN
 M. BOYNTON, PATRICIA M. MCCARTHY.
                   ______________________
Case: 22-1368     Document: 47     Page: 2    Filed: 08/22/2023

 2                  ECC INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTORS, LLC v.
                                    SECRETARY OF THE ARMY

     Before PROST, LINN, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit Judges.
 PROST, Circuit Judge.
     ECC International Constructors, LLC (“ECCI”) ap-
 peals a decision of the Armed Services Board of Contract
 Appeals (“Board”) partially dismissing its claim for lack of
 jurisdiction. ECC Int’l Constructors, LLC, ASBCA No.
 59643, 21-1 BCA ¶ 37,967 (Nov. 10, 2021). We reverse and
 remand.
      The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded ECCI a
 contract in 2010 to design and build a military compound
 in Afghanistan. On May 2, 2014, ECCI submitted a claim
 to the contracting officer under the Contract Disputes Act
 (“CDA”), 41 U.S.C. §§ 7101–7109, seeking $3,767,856.32 in
 relief for additional costs it allegedly incurred due to gov-
 ernment directives to perform extra work. After years of
 litigation and a hearing on the merits in June 2020, the
 government moved to dismiss nine out of 23 direct cost
 items identified in ECCI’s claim for lack of subject-matter
 jurisdiction, arguing that each of those nine cost items com-
 prises multiple sub-claims that require, but failed to state,
 their own sum certain. The Board granted the govern-
 ment’s motion to dismiss.
     Today we issued an opinion in a companion appeal,
 No. 21-2323, from the Board’s dismissal of a claim arising
 out of the same contract. Like here, the Board in that case
 dismissed ECCI’s claim for lack of subject-matter jurisdic-
 tion because ECCI failed to state a sum certain for each
 sub-claim. We reversed and remanded, holding that the
 sum-certain requirement for CDA claims is a mandatory
 but nonjurisdictional requirement subject to forfeiture.
     Our holding in the companion appeal compels the same
 result here. Accordingly, we reverse the Board’s partial
 dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. We re-
 mand for the Board to evaluate whether the government
Case: 22-1368    Document: 47      Page: 3   Filed: 08/22/2023

 ECC INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTORS, LLC v.                    3
 SECRETARY OF THE ARMY

 forfeited its right to challenge ECCI’s satisfaction of the
 sum-certain requirement, and, if it did, to consider ECCI’s
 case on the merits.
             REVERSED AND REMANDED
                           COSTS
 No costs.