Navistar Defense is taking the Army to court for violating the "automatic stay" requirements of the Competition in Contracting Act in procuring vehicles as part of the Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles program.
In a complaint filed today with the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Navistar contends the Army did not suspend performance of the FMTV contract, awarded to Oshkosh Defense, in response to a July 8 protest Navistar filed with the Government Accountability Office. The new complaint argues the Army also failed to notify GAO of its plans to continue performance, violating the CICA.
Navistar's July 8 GAO protest followed a June 28 award by the Army to Oshkosh for the FMTV, addressing the Army's sole-source contract action for work "beyond the scope [of] any prior justification issued by the Army," according to Navistar.
The $320 million modification awarded June 28 was for domestic and foreign military FMTV sales -- to Argentina, Djibouti, Iraq, Lebanon and Romania -- and has an estimated end date of Aug. 24, 2021, according to a Defense Department announcement.
Navistar in its July 8 protest argued the Army had been unjustly awarding follow-on, sole-source awards to Oshkosh for five years based on the contract originally competed in 2009.
"The 2009 contract was awarded as a five-year arrangement that ended in 2014," Navistar's GAO protest says. "However, since that time, the Army has expanded the 2009 contract as a platform for billions of additional dollars in sole-source awards to Oshkosh -- in violation of the competition requirements as prescribed by law. Now at the end of the tenth year of the 2009 contract, the Army is attempting once more to dramatically expand the scope of the contract by placing yet another massive sole-source award, without any justification, to Oshkosh worth hundreds of millions of dollars."
The GAO protest notes Navistar had protested previous sole-source awards the Army made pursuant to the 2009 contract, all of which had "resulted in the Army taking corrective action and entering into a settlement agreement with Navistar Defense."
However, before receiving a decision from GAO on the initial protest, Navistar filed a second protest Aug. 23 in federal court, at which point a Justice Department attorney informed Navistar the Army "had failed to comply with the CICA Automatic Stay requirements," following Navistar's July 8 GAO protest, according to today's filing.
Navistar on Aug. 26 withdrew the GAO protest.
Now, Navistar is seeking "an injunction prohibiting the Army from relying on its continued performance of orders protested in the GAO protest, or any costs related to such continued performance, to support any future sole-source action," and other measures, as well as an award to cover attorney's fees.
David Hazelton, Navistar's attorney, told Inside Defense via email, "We have never before seen an agency simply disregard the statutory automatic stay requirements that are a key part of the GAO protest process."
He added, "We brought this action to put the spotlight on what appears to be questionable conduct by the Army -- both in its disregard of the statutory stay and in its handling of this entire procurement. Our client simply wants to be treated fairly in connection with the Army's procurement of tactical wheeled vehicles."