Overview

Biographies

The core of Miller & Chevalier’s Government Contracts practice is its litigation capability, which is second to none.   Each of the group’s lawyers is a litigator.  We litigate in the federal district and state courts, the Court of Federal Claims, the boards of contract appeals, and the Government Accountability Office.  We also have substantial experience in arbitrations and mini-trials, and other forms of alternate dispute resolution.  Accordingly, whenever litigation is being contemplated or pursued, we are alert to opportunities for favorable settlements or alternative mechanisms that will help avoid protracted disputes. 

Significant engagements:

• We filed suit on behalf of Hughes in the Court of Federal Claims to recover damages for breach of contract when NASA refused to launch Hughes satellites on the Space Shuttle after the Challenger disaster.  We secured summary judgment on the issue of liability, and then tried our case on quantum in a two-week trial, and were awarded $102 million – one of the largest breach recoveries in the Court of Federal Claims.  We successfully defended the full amount of the judgment against the government’s appeal to the Federal Circuit.
• For more than a decade, we prosecuted a hard-fought prime-sub dispute on behalf of General Motors and Rolls-Royce that resulted in a $67.6 million judgment at trial for our clients in Indiana state court.  We successfully convinced the jury that the prime contractor, Northrop, had withheld superior knowledge from our client, that Northrop’s design specifications were defective, and that Northrop had breached the contract by failing to pay for changes in the specifications.
• We secured $50 million for our client Pulte Homes in a “Winstar”-type case for breach of contract filed in the Court of Federal Claims.   We won summary judgment on liability, and later were awarded approximately $50 million in damages on summary judgment.  We defended the full amount of the judgment on appeal to the Federal Circuit.

• Our client and the government agreed to mediate a dispute regarding the client’s compliance with CAS 401, 402, 405 and TINA that had been festering for over 10 years.  The Air Force, DCMA, and DCAA asserted that the cost impact of the alleged noncompliances exceeded $12 million.  We engaged in voluntary discovery and submitted position papers on the CAS and TINA issues and on quantum.  After a two-day mediation, the dispute was settled for a de minimis payment.