As we discussed during Crowell & Moring’s webinar last week Top Headlines, Headaches, and Developments for Government Contractors to Watch in 2015, the recent ASBCA decision in Laguna Construction is likely to reverberate in 2015 and beyond. This case introduced the doctrine of “antecedent breach” in the ASBCA as a means of denying legitimate contractor claims.

In Laguna, after the completion of the contract, the contractor submitted a $3 million claim based on a dozen separate task orders under a large IDIQ contract. Mid-way through litigation, two contractor employees pled guilty to receiving kickbacks from subcontractors on some, but not all, of the Task Orders at issue in the litigation. The Government then added Fraud as an affirmative defense at the Board, arguing that Laguna’s entire claim should be denied because Laguna’s employees had pled to Fraud on some of the Task Orders.
Continue Reading Claims Practice Bulletin: Performance Fraud, Imputed Liability, and Antecedent Breach