'Page-Count' Method Supports Claim For Reimbursement Of Protest Costs
Client Alert | 1 min read | 08.17.06
Despite the agency's blanket objections to almost all of a prevailing protester's claimed costs, the Government Accountability Office ("GAO") in BAE Technical Services, Inc. - Costs , B-296699.3 (Aug. 11, 2006), http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/2966993.pdf, held that the protester was entitled to recover costs attributed to almost all of the issues raised as they are "largely intertwined parts of [its] basic objection that the [agency] misevaluated proposals and treated offerors unequally." Although the records of the time spent on the protest were not detailed enough to attribute time on an issue-by-issue basis, GAO relied on the application of a "page-count" method to conclude that approximately 94.5 percent of the number of pages in submissions to GAO were devoted to issues related to the meritorious protest allegations.
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Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.21.25
On November 7, 2025, in Thornton v. National Academy of Sciences, No. 25-cv-2155, 2025 WL 3123732 (D.D.C. Nov. 7, 2025), the District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed a False Claims Act (FCA) retaliation complaint on the basis that the plaintiff’s allegations that he was fired after blowing the whistle on purported illegally discriminatory use of federal funding was not sufficient to support his FCA claim. This case appears to be one of the first filed, and subsequently dismissed, following Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s announcement of the creation of the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative on May 19, 2025, which “strongly encourages” private individuals to file lawsuits under the FCA relating to purportedly discriminatory and illegal use of federal funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in violation of Executive Order 14173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity (Jan. 21, 2025). In this case, the court dismissed the FCA retaliation claim and rejected the argument that an organization could violate the FCA merely by “engaging in discriminatory conduct while conducting a federally funded study.” The analysis in Thornton could be a sign of how forthcoming arguments of retaliation based on reporting allegedly fraudulent DEI activity will be analyzed in the future.
Client Alert | 3 min read | 11.20.25
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Client Alert | 6 min read | 11.19.25
