A two-year legal fight comes to a head Thursday with a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., set to consider if incumbent Swift & Staley was too large to qualify for a $160-million small business contract it won in December 2020 at the Department of Energy’s Paducah Site in Kentucky.
Sometime after 10 a.m. Eastern Time, a panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit will hear arguments on whether to reverse an earlier ruling by U.S. Federal Claims Court Judge Thompson Dietz, who said incumbent Swift & Staley was too large to win a new landlord services contract two years ago. The company’s existing contract at Paducah is now worth more than $335 million.
In March Dietz agreed with a Small Business Administration panel, and rival bidder Akima Intra-Data, that Swift & Staley should not have been awarded the new deal. The judge agreed the incumbent violated the $41.5-million annual revenue size cap for this set-aside contract after accounting for the company’s stake in a North Wind Group-led venture that provided similar services at DOE’s Portsmouth Site near Piketon, Ohio.
An online calendar lists Swift & Staley versus United States as the fourth case to come before an appeals panel starting at 10 a.m. Online streaming of the live oral arguments can be accessed here.
Although Dietz ruled in March that Swift & Staley was “other than small” and not eligible for the new five-year contract at Paducah, the judge agreed to stay enactment of his own order until the federal appeals court weighs in on the case. The federal claims court judge agreed the incumbent would suffer irreparable harm if forced to give up the business, officially dubbed the Paducah Infrastructure Services Contract, while in the middle of an appeal.
