Court Opinion

ID: 9449095
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:56:27.088388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:41.832947
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, Judge
(concurring in the result) .
I agree that the contract, as originally written, did not provide for painting the interior masonry surfaces (except for some in the operations room). The general direction in specification 27-8 (a) for painting “concrete masonry units” (among other things) contains the qualification “except where otherwise specified” ; this general paragraph must therefore yield to specific paragraph 27-8(g) declaring, in effect, that the only interior exposed masonry surfaces to be painted are those indicated on the drawings. What ambiguity there may be should be resolved against the Government, as the court points out. This contract, like that in Beacon Construction Co. v. United States, Ct.Cl., 314 F.2d 501 also decided this day, incorporates an Article 2 directing the contractor to bring to the Contracting Officer’s attention discrepancies in the specifications and drawings, but the cases differ significantly in at least three ways: (a) The discrepancy here, if one existed at *511all, was not of the gross and patent character with which the court is dealing in Beacon Construction Co., but could, rather easily, be resolved by reading the contract as a whole; (b) the possible ambiguity came to light only after the contract was signed, not before it was consummated; and (c) that ambiguity was obviously apparent to the contracting officer prior to the time plaintiff discovered it. In this case, accordingly, there was no breach by the contractor of the requirements of Article 2.
I am more troubled, however, than is the court by modification No. 3 which indisputably required all interior surfaces to be painted. The plaintiff, who is an experienced contractor, should not be excused in court because his representative did not understand the plain agreement he was signing, any more than the Government would be relieved of an obligation if its contracting officer inadvertently agreed to something he soon regretted. “It will not do for a man to enter into a contract, and, when called upon to respond to its obligations, to say, that he did not read when he signed it, or did not know what it contained.” Upton v. Tribilcock, 91 U.S. 45, 50, 23 L.Ed. 203 (1875). Nor was the Government at fault for not realizing that plaintiff had signed the modification without understanding its import. Since the original contract was not absolutely clear and the problem had not yet arisen, the contracting officer could well think that plaintiff understood the contract in the same way as the Government and acquiesced in the “clarifying” amendment, or even that the plaintiff was willing to absorb the costs of any additional painting in view of his over-all remuneration. Under the accepted objective theory of contract formation there was a valid agreement and no such mutual mistake, or palpable unilateral mistake, as to the facts which should lead to rescission or reformation.2 Cf. Vakas v. Manuel, D.C., Cir., 316 F.2d 369. This result would not be altered by the circumstance that after the modification had been signed the contracting officer told plaintiff that, if the original contract failed to require painting of the interior masonry walls, the modification had been made under a mutual mistake. This after-the-event statement was simply an erroneous legal conclusion by the contracting officer which was not binding on the defendant.
Nevertheless, I am led to concur in the court’s judgment because the contracting officer treated modification No. 3, with respect to the painting, not as an independent binding agreement but as a contract-change subject in full to the regular procedure for changes. The modification was actually a change in the original contract which caused an increase in the amount due and which should therefore have occasioned an equitable adjustment. The contracting officer, however, did not make an equitable adjustment (because he incorrectly believed that no increase in cost was being added). The plaintiff, in turn, did not make a timely claim under the Changes article, but he did file an untimely request. The Changes article expressly permits the contracting officer, in his discretion, to consider any such belated claim up to the date of final settlement. As the findings show, this contracting officer treated plaintiff’s claim in exactly that fashion. He told plaintiff that modification No. 3 would not prejudice his claim; he considered the claim on its merits and did not deem the plaintiff’s acceptance of the modification to be conclusive; and he mistakenly decided that the change was only a formal one, not increasing the amount due under the contract. Thus, the contracting officer exercised his discretionary authority to weigh plaintiff’s prayer for additional compensation under the Changes article (even though he was not compelled to do so), and chose to deny the claim on its merits, despite the existence of the modi*512fication.3 In those circumstances, it is proper under the contract for us to deal with the issue just as if plaintiff had never accepted modification No. 3 but all along had demanded extra compensation. In that posture he would be entitled to recover, since the contracting officer’s denial of the equitable adjustment rested on an erroneous interpretation of the original contract.

. In Beacon Construction Co. v. United States, Ct.Cl., 314 F.2d 501, we are today refusing the Government’s request to disregard a modification, agreed to by both parties, which later turned out to have been improvident on the Government’s part and which it tried unilaterally to rescind.

. Once the contracting officer exercised Ms authority to consider the belated claim on its merits (under the Changes article), the appellate administrative bodies could no longer stand on modification No. 3 alone. Cf. P.L.S. Coat & Suit Corp. v. United States, 180 F.Supp. 400, 403, 148 Ct.Cl. 296, 300-301 (1960).