Court Opinion

ID: 9457404
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:20:47.156149+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:20.177010
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, Judge
(concurring in the result) :
There are serious difficulties with each side’s case, and no wholly satisfactory decision can be attained. Although as a trier-of-fact I might well agree with the court on the two administrative findings-of-faet it sets aside, I cannot say, as to either, that there is no substantial evidence to support the Board. Behind the determination that plaintiff decided to construct welded steel tanks “as an inducement for the award” is the unequivocal testimony of the contractor’s representative (Mr. Egge) that “we wanted to get the contract and we figured that this was an item that might please them if we furnished the welded tanks.” I can understand this in no other way than that plaintiff decided upon the welded tanks as an inducement for the award — and as the trier the Board could, if it wished, take the statement at face value. As for the other overturned finding — that the contract price-item of $139,900 adequately compensated plaintiff for the tanks — the government testimony (related in the court’s opinion) seems to supply a substantial, though not a good, basis; the Board could decide the point either way on the evidence presented to it.
Nevertheless, I come out for the plaintiff. Accepting the administrative findings-of-facf, we are still left with very *1406unclear and very ambiguous contract terms, quite susceptible of either plaintiff’s or defendant’s interpretation. That the contractor supplied the welded tanks as an inducement for the award does not necessarily mean that the Government was to have title; the inducement could have been simply that the receptacles would not leak. Similarly, the rough equivalence between the $139,900 figure and the cost of the tanks loses much significance when it is noted that the same figure was used for the diesel fuel at a time before consideration of welded tanks and when bolted tanks were being proffered. The difficulties with defendant’s reading and the reasonableness of plaintiff’s (which has its own problems) are spelled out in the court’s opinion (though I view as irrelevant some of the detail pointed to by the court). What emerges, still another in a long and melancholy procession, is a very ambiguous government contract in which the contractor could reasonably take the position it did, and in which it is hard to see only one “right” answer. The result was preordained. See, e. g., WPC Enterprises Inc. v. United States, 323 F.2d 874, 163 Ct.Cl. 1 (1963); Sturm v. United States, 421 F.2d 723, 190 Ct.Cl. 691 (1970).