This article is the fifth in a series summarizing construction law developments for 2010.
By Candace Matson, Harold Hamersmith & Helen Lauderdale
A. Bidding
- Great West Contractors Inc. v. Irvine School District, 187 Cal. App. 4th 1425 (4th Dist. Aug. 2010)
In Great West Contractors, the Fourth District held that a public agency's rejection of a bid for a public works project on the basis that a corporate bidder did not list its officers' licenses is a question of bidder responsibility, not bid responsiveness, and therefore a due process hearing was required. The Court of Appeal said that the case is important for two reasons. First, it presents a challenging problem in public contracting law: how to distinguish a "non-responsive" bid from a de facto determination that the bidder is not a "responsible" bidder. Second, the case presents what the court called "an object lesson in how evidence that, at least on its face, tends to show favoritism – indeed, on this record, favoritism most foul – never got squarely presented to, or considered by, the trial court." The Court invited readers of the opinion to judge for themselves whether "stonewalling" might not be a better word than "delay" for describing the public agency's actions.
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