DCAA's Use of a Statistically Invalid Analysis for Testing Compensation Reasonableness

The ASBCA in J.F. Taylor, Inc. (Jan. 18, 2012) rejected DCAA’s disallowance of executive compensation, based primarily on the credibility of differing expert opinions. The board concluded that the standard DCAA analysis relying on a “rule of reason” that permits compensation within 10% of the 50th percentile of an unweighted average of multiple surveys with different sample sizes is statistically invalid, at least in part because the contractor’s expert was credible and the government’s, who had included in his resume what was arguably a mail order PhD from a South African “university,” was not.